4 ms·

Looking at the "statement of work", unless I'm misunderstanding - it's 3 user (workstation?) licenses? To me, it's more like 3 engineers at NASA are interested

Looking at the "statement of work", unless I'm misunderstanding - it's 3 user (workstation?) licenses? To me, it's more like 3 engineers at NASA are interested in it and got their boss to get them 3 licenses? As opposed to "NASA moves all RHEL licenses to Rocky after Redhat destroys CentOS community"? Edit: I know nothing of how govournment agencies (and certainly not US ones) work.. I assume all purchases go through some process where they're all made public?

jaimehrubiks 3y ago
That seems very likely, either for personal preference or for testing the distribution
tssva 3y ago
They didn't purchase licenses. They purchased support.
- imachine1980_ 3y ago
  Yes for 3 workstation, they are probably testing the support
  - tyingq 3y ago
    The pdf mentions renewal, so maybe not even that. Just 3 people renewing a support contract. "The item described in the table below is for the FY23 CIQ Rocky Enterprise Linux Renewal."
  - tssva 3y ago
    Or possibly a project installed Rocky Linux because it was easier, faster and cheaper than procuring RHEL licenses. It was found in an audit and now they had to procure and switch to RHEL or procure support for Rocky Linux. A complete wild ass guess but I have seen it happen at other agencies with open source software. Since I retired on Friday, my experience with government IT and procurement is slightly out of date but based upon my knowledge of it until that point I would consider it a better wild ass guess than NASA procured 3 Rocky Linux workstation support contracts to test it before making some agency wide switch.
    - justsomehnguy 3y ago
      > installed Rocky Linux because it was easier, faster and cheaper than procuring RHEL licenses Thanks, I almost spit my coffee. Some years ago I read some docs on how exactly RHEL licensing works... guess the team which Oraclised MSFT in 2010 moved to RH.
      - tssva 3y ago
        The complications in getting a license that I was thinking of was those imposed by the government procurement process and not Redhat.
        justsomehnguy 3y ago
        Yes, it's obvious, but in essence Rocky licensing is downloading an .iso and reading LICENSE.txt and comparinv this to anything RHEL related is what gave ne a chuckle
jvanderbot 3y ago
Here's how it works (POV NASA/JPL PM of 8 years): * The institution has a slush / IT fund that provides basic windows laptops or MACs, right off the shelf with lots of security add-ons * For any non standard equipment or software, the engineers on a project must seek money from the project's budget and justify that cost to the project manager. (not their long-term boss). * Project managers have a fixed budget based on the proposal they wrote to the funding agency, usually US GOV, with a fixed cost for these kinds of purchases, agreed upon at the time the proposal was funded * The limited project funds are used to purchase whatever is needed to satisfy the project's objectives. If the project's objectives are not satisfied, the funding agency can stop, or even pull back funding from the project manager * The approvals for equipment purchases are, at least in theory, given based on merit, which is very often weighed using prior successful proposals. New types of purchases are scrutinized more. If it's traditional to buy CENTOS, then buying ROCKY would be more difficult. * That precedent is key. Once it becomes clear that ROCKY is being used by successful teams, then the approval process is much easier. That's why this is a big-ish deal (not huge, but nice to see). Now, people writing proposals and working on projects can point to this as precedent. The best outcome is when funding agencies see "ROCKY is better and more cost effective for the teams we've been funding", then you might get a funder to request that teams use ROCKY as part of the proposal requirements. This is almost nonexistent in federal contracts, but is quite common when dealing with military or commercial contracts. That, and ROCKY can probably now have a NASA logo on their website under "customers", which adds a bunch of credibility to the project, honestly, whether it's necessarily deserved or not based on 3 desktops.
- prpl 3y ago
  That sounds a bit more rigid than what I knew to be the case. I think every one I worked with from Goddard had a mac - unless - they specifically asked for something else. That includes both the civil servants and contractors. Purchases were hard because acquisition was hard but I don’t think the bar requires previous use. Usually getting a vendor to accept a PO was the hard part IIRC
  - jvanderbot 3y ago
    Yeah, as I mentioned below, "Standard" equipment did include macs, and I had a mac myself. I'll edit for clarity.

jaimehrubiks 3y ago

That seems very likely, either for personal preference or for testing the distribution

tssva 3y ago

They didn't purchase licenses. They purchased support.

imachine1980_ 3y ago
Yes for 3 workstation, they are probably testing the support
- tyingq 3y ago
  The pdf mentions renewal, so maybe not even that. Just 3 people renewing a support contract. "The item described in the table below is for the FY23 CIQ Rocky Enterprise Linux Renewal."
- tssva 3y ago
  Or possibly a project installed Rocky Linux because it was easier, faster and cheaper than procuring RHEL licenses. It was found in an audit and now they had to procure and switch to RHEL or procure support for Rocky Linux. A complete wild ass guess but I have seen it happen at other agencies with open source software. Since I retired on Friday, my experience with government IT and procurement is slightly out of date but based upon my knowledge of it until that point I would consider it a better wild ass guess than NASA procured 3 Rocky Linux workstation support contracts to test it before making some agency wide switch.
  - justsomehnguy 3y ago
    > installed Rocky Linux because it was easier, faster and cheaper than procuring RHEL licenses Thanks, I almost spit my coffee. Some years ago I read some docs on how exactly RHEL licensing works... guess the team which Oraclised MSFT in 2010 moved to RH.
    - tssva 3y ago
      The complications in getting a license that I was thinking of was those imposed by the government procurement process and not Redhat.
      - justsomehnguy 3y ago
        Yes, it's obvious, but in essence Rocky licensing is downloading an .iso and reading LICENSE.txt and comparinv this to anything RHEL related is what gave ne a chuckle

jvanderbot 3y ago

Here's how it works (POV NASA/JPL PM of 8 years): * The institution has a slush / IT fund that provides basic windows laptops or MACs, right off the shelf with lots of security add-ons * For any non standard equipment or software, the engineers on a project must seek money from the project's budget and justify that cost to the project manager. (not their long-term boss). * Project managers have a fixed budget based on the proposal they wrote to the funding agency, usually US GOV, with a fixed cost for these kinds of purchases, agreed upon at the time the proposal was funded * The limited project funds are used to purchase whatever is needed to satisfy the project's objectives. If the project's objectives are not satisfied, the funding agency can stop, or even pull back funding from the project manager * The approvals for equipment purchases are, at least in theory, given based on merit, which is very often weighed using prior successful proposals. New types of purchases are scrutinized more. If it's traditional to buy CENTOS, then buying ROCKY would be more difficult. * That precedent is key. Once it becomes clear that ROCKY is being used by successful teams, then the approval process is much easier. That's why this is a big-ish deal (not huge, but nice to see). Now, people writing proposals and working on projects can point to this as precedent. The best outcome is when funding agencies see "ROCKY is better and more cost effective for the teams we've been funding", then you might get a funder to request that teams use ROCKY as part of the proposal requirements. This is almost nonexistent in federal contracts, but is quite common when dealing with military or commercial contracts. That, and ROCKY can probably now have a NASA logo on their website under "customers", which adds a bunch of credibility to the project, honestly, whether it's necessarily deserved or not based on 3 desktops.

prpl 3y ago
That sounds a bit more rigid than what I knew to be the case. I think every one I worked with from Goddard had a mac - unless - they specifically asked for something else. That includes both the civil servants and contractors. Purchases were hard because acquisition was hard but I don’t think the bar requires previous use. Usually getting a vendor to accept a PO was the hard part IIRC
- jvanderbot 3y ago
  Yeah, as I mentioned below, "Standard" equipment did include macs, and I had a mac myself. I'll edit for clarity.