Re: Guest account at Center for Software Reuse

[srctran@world.std.com (Gregory Aharonian)]

>Two questions:
>     Have you thought about calling DSRO to apply for an account?
>(Because of Export Controlled material there needs to be individual
>accountability)  [703-536-6900].
>     Because everyone else does it differently, does that make them right?
>
>Ken.

Ken,
	Your questions reflect why reuse is so screwed up in the DoD.
Reuse is a technology transfer problem.  For those of us who try to
earn a living on reuse and techtran, the key is marketing, marketing,
marketing.  I have to go out and find customers and sell, sell, sell.
They are not going to come to me, I have to go to them.  I shouldn't
be calling DSRO - DSRO should be calling me and everyone else pushing
their reusable software.  DSRO, like all of the prior funded DoD
reuse efforts, are groups of people in a business who don't want to
be in a business.  The result is the endless Santayana disasters that
always repeat the prior mistakes.

    Sure there are different ways of doing things.  The problem with
DSRO, ASSET, RAPID, etc is that they never learn from the mistakes of
previous efforts, nor do they seek out those who have succeeded with
reuse.  I know of half a dozen or so substantial reuse efforts in other
branches of the government who have never been contacted by any of the
DoD reuse efforts.  What kind of incompetence does this show?

    For example, I am always seeking out collections of reusable software
to add information on to my databases, a very active process.  Not once
has any DoD reuse effort ever contacted me to arrange to get at my
information, or my techniques for tracking all of the government's software
output on a budget of $2000 a year, or my knowledge of the locations of
thousands and thousands of defense computer programs available publicly
in source code form.  What does this say about DSRO's real interest in
reuse, as opposed to their real interest in spending whatever money they
have been budgeted?

    If DSRO has to exist as a stand alone business, with no government
support, with its current management and business practices, where users
had to pay for access to reusable software, DSRO would be bankrupt in
six months.  If DSRO showed its user interface to their components library
at any trade show or conference, they would be laughed off the stage
(and having once seen the source code to the interface, a well justified
laugh).    What this means is that contractors don't like to spend
money on reuse, and that efforts like DSRO are just another welfare
subsidy to defense contractors too long coddled with blank-check
government contracts, and a place to prepare resumes.

Greg Aharonian
Source Translation & Optimization


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Greg Aharonian
Source Translation & Optimiztion
P.O. Box 404, Belmont, MA 02178