Open source lives on Mars with rover mission extension (NewsForge) [LWN.net]

NewsForge talks with Jeff Norris, a senior computer scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory who headed development of the Martian rovers' Science Activity Planner. "Norris said open source software is not necessarily onboard the Martian rovers, but is instead here on Earth controlling them and communicating with them. He explained that during development, NASA engineers were able to focus on their mission rather than those components that were going to rely on open source."

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Glowing Comments from Jeff Norris, senior computer scientist at NASA...

Posted Oct 2, 2004 0:41 UTC (Sat) by Tashlan (guest, #17277) [Link]

... but Norris said the team found the open source software used in the project to be comparatively superior. "Among the components we used, we found the open source components to be of far greater quality," he said.

The responsiveness of open source developers was also impressive, according to Norris, who compared turnaround times of hours for open source to months for commercial providers.

"All they could really guarantee us was some developers were looking at it and it might be in the next release in six months," Norris recalled. Response on fixes or workarounds from open source developers, conversely, was immediate, Norris said.

As a *mere* user of OpenSource, I'd like to thank you for your glowing comments, Jeff. And of course, thanks to the developers for earning them.

Open source lives on Mars with rover mission extension (NewsForge)

Posted Oct 3, 2004 13:45 UTC (Sun) by boson (guest, #23807) [Link]

Probably developers tried extra hard to fix bugs for Mars mission. I would take much pride in knowing that my software is used for such noble purpose.