4 ms·

> a government policy that prevents federal agencies from building their own software when they have access to commercial alternatives From personal experience

by lukev 14y ago

> a government policy that prevents federal agencies from building their own software when they have access to commercial alternatives From personal experience, this just means that instead of spending billions of man-hours building software, the government spends billions of man-hours "integrating" software that costs billions of dollars.

Natsu 14y ago
I wonder who they pissed off with this? My first guess would be Oracle, but it's merely a guess.
- themckman 14y ago
  I don't know. If you read the article, they specifically keep mentioning HBase and Cassandra as the alternatives that the NSA should have tried to build upon rather than build something from scratch. edit: I will say I'm not familiar enough with the timelines for all 3 projects to know if that is possible, however, I'd imagine Wired would have had been a bit more vocal if there were specific corporate interests they could have tied to the story.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - jfoutz 14y ago
    From the apache site, "Apache Accumulo is based on Google's BigTable design and is built on top of Apache Hadoop, Zookeeper, and Thrift." So, it's not like they started from zero, looks more like the early alternatives weren't a good fit. Furthermore i doubt any of the alternatives were very impressive in 2008.
  - stonemetal 14y ago
    Accumulo is almost identical to HBase, except it has security features built in to its core. I wouldn't be surprised if it started out as a fork of HBase.
- espeed 14y ago
  Or, it could be a submarine piece (http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html) for Sqrrl.
  - sakai 14y ago
    Sqrrl?
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
    - chrismsnz 14y ago
      It's in the article. "and that’s a particular worry for Oren Falkowitz, one of the developers of the database, who has left the NSA to start Sqrrl, a company that seeks to build a business around Accumulo in much the same way Red Hat built one around the Linux operating system."
- neurotech1 14y ago
  Likely Oracle. They have a NoSQL product now http://www.oracle.com/NoSQLDatabase http://www.oracle.com/NoSQLDatabase and would probably push that onto their clients if they can't push Oracle DB. The real cashcow is their hyper-expensive Oracle DB and Application Server products. They'd use political lobbying to protect the marketshare and billions in revenue.
  - ratsbane 14y ago
    Interesting. I hadn't heard about the Oracle Nosql thing and that link didn't work for me, but this does: http://www.oracle.com/us/products/database/nosql/overview/index.html http://www.oracle.com/us/products/database/nosql/overview/in... I wonder what's the story behind that.
    - ams6110 14y ago
      I thought it was their new name for BerkeleyDB. Is it something else?
  - emmelaich 14y ago
    Oracle BigData uses open source software such as Hadoop and R. http://www.oracle.com/us/technologies/big-data/index.html http://www.oracle.com/us/technologies/big-data/index.html Accumulo also uses Hadoop.

by lukev 14y ago

Natsu 14y ago

I wonder who they pissed off with this? My first guess would be Oracle, but it's merely a guess.

themckman 14y ago
I don't know. If you read the article, they specifically keep mentioning HBase and Cassandra as the alternatives that the NSA should have tried to build upon rather than build something from scratch. edit: I will say I'm not familiar enough with the timelines for all 3 projects to know if that is possible, however, I'd imagine Wired would have had been a bit more vocal if there were specific corporate interests they could have tied to the story.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- jfoutz 14y ago
  From the apache site, "Apache Accumulo is based on Google's BigTable design and is built on top of Apache Hadoop, Zookeeper, and Thrift." So, it's not like they started from zero, looks more like the early alternatives weren't a good fit. Furthermore i doubt any of the alternatives were very impressive in 2008.
- stonemetal 14y ago
  Accumulo is almost identical to HBase, except it has security features built in to its core. I wouldn't be surprised if it started out as a fork of HBase.
espeed 14y ago
Or, it could be a submarine piece (http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html) for Sqrrl.
- sakai 14y ago
  Sqrrl?
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - chrismsnz 14y ago
    It's in the article. "and that’s a particular worry for Oren Falkowitz, one of the developers of the database, who has left the NSA to start Sqrrl, a company that seeks to build a business around Accumulo in much the same way Red Hat built one around the Linux operating system."
neurotech1 14y ago
Likely Oracle. They have a NoSQL product now http://www.oracle.com/NoSQLDatabase http://www.oracle.com/NoSQLDatabase and would probably push that onto their clients if they can't push Oracle DB. The real cashcow is their hyper-expensive Oracle DB and Application Server products. They'd use political lobbying to protect the marketshare and billions in revenue.
- ratsbane 14y ago
  Interesting. I hadn't heard about the Oracle Nosql thing and that link didn't work for me, but this does: http://www.oracle.com/us/products/database/nosql/overview/index.html http://www.oracle.com/us/products/database/nosql/overview/in... I wonder what's the story behind that.
  - ams6110 14y ago
    I thought it was their new name for BerkeleyDB. Is it something else?
- emmelaich 14y ago
  Oracle BigData uses open source software such as Hadoop and R. http://www.oracle.com/us/technologies/big-data/index.html http://www.oracle.com/us/technologies/big-data/index.html Accumulo also uses Hadoop.