Linux Powers Military UGV 376
An anonymous reader writes "Linux powers a new autonomous unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) that learns routes by following along behind foot-soldiers, after which it can retrace the route solo, avoiding obstacles. iRobot's "R-Gator" UGV is based on John Deere's 658cc, diesel-powered M-Gator military utility vehicle platform, with control, navigation, and object-avoidance systems based on BlueCat Linux from LynuxWorks. I wonder how Linux idealists feel about their cute little OS being deployed in machinery of war?"
Sweet! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Sweet! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Sweet! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Sweet! (Score:2, Funny)
The military was also concerned about missing their automatic updates and new virus definitions, making their military equipment vulnerable to 'bunker' overflow exploits which could result in unauthorized user access.
Of course, by using linux the military was also concerned about its rumoured ties to communism, however at present this has been un
Windows is better for War. (Score:2)
Re:Sweet! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Sweet! (Score:4, Funny)
Too bad about Gimp, though.
Re:Sweet! (Score:2)
Re:Sweet! (Score:2)
I think impatient individuals such as myself should be allowed to edit own posts. At least for the first 30 seconds after posting.
First Weapons ports (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:First Weapons ports (Score:5, Funny)
Re:First Weapons ports (Score:4, Funny)
How do they feel? (Score:5, Insightful)
And best yet, no blue screen of open fire
Re:How do they feel? (Score:2)
I'd agree with this.
Re:How do they feel? (Score:2)
With as high of a deficit that we run, every bit of cash that is taken away from the military contractors and military and put into actually helping Americans, or used to cut taxes, or used to pay down the debt, is worthwhile.
Every dollar saved by running Linux on a military robot is a dollar spent for your benefit instead
Re:How do they feel? (Score:2, Flamebait)
Welcome to the robot future, where the first world supports war, as long as it doesn't cost too much.
Re:How do they feel? (Score:4, Insightful)
This is exactly the reason that the idea of a unmanned/robot army is such a horrible thing. It dehumanizes the conflict and makes war less and less of a "worse" choice.
At what point will our robot army get to the point where the people whom we are attacking are essentially in a situation similar to the Terminator or Matrix?
And will the console jockeys recognize the humanity of those they sentence to death?
I do not deny that it is necessary to force to defend that which is good, but I hope you will excuse me if I do not trust the government, any government, to be in charge of a deathless army.
Re:Dehumanizes war? (Score:4, Insightful)
Look, last I checked, we don't need robots to dehumanize war.
It doesn't take Strong AI to get the Nationalistic or dogmatic fervor up in which thousands or millions of your own people are screaming at the top of the lungs "Death to the infidels!" [wikipedia.org], "For the motherland/fatherland!" [wikipedia.org] (depending which side you are on), or "Let's napalm those sons of bitches... for FREEDOM!" [wikipedia.org]
I could sit hear all day and list countless examples of how normal people turn into rabid killing machines for the nation or belief and how war doesn't need technology to dehumanize attrocities.
What technology does do is make war more impersonal and amplifies what a small group of people can do to another group. As in... I don't have to get in your face and stab you with sword, but I can shoot a rapid fire machine gun at 300m and kill more men in a second than in a day with a sword. There will probaly always be war as long as man is around. Maybe there will be bits and times of peace, but eventually I'd dar say once man is in the stars and colonized other systems we will see wars out there too.
Robots might even be better than humans. Most war attrocities have occurred when the soldiers on the ground freak out because of war stress or maybe because of retaliation and round up villagers/pows and force them to dig their own graves and then shoot them. The digging the graves is often optional.(see the My Lai Massacre [wikipedia.org]
Heck... Those guys might not even be that stressed out but they might be just pissed off for stories they heard on the war (see Balkan Wars [wikipedia.org])
Robots won't disobey war cimes orders nor will they have a concious thinking to themselves "gee maybe this is wrong", but as the record stands now, most humans don't seem to have a problem with commiting war crimes either given the right circumstances.
Ethical war condunct is the responbility of the government and those controlling the weapons. If you tell your robots to murder civilians, you are just as guilty as the person who told his human soldiers to murder civilians.
The benefit of robots, is and always will be the saving of lives of "our" fighting men and women. The US military will proceed with this whether we like it or not and the public will support it because it is their sons and daughters that are dying.
Re:How do they feel? (Score:5, Insightful)
I will focus on the technological point of view here because the political and military sides...hell we all know that'll jsut cause yelling
Military spending, in the West since 1900 has had positive outcomes technologically in the long run. Yea, poison gas, nuclear bombs, machine guns all killed people. But GPS, centimeter to millimeter wave radar, Doppler radar, composite aircraft materials, advanced avionics, LORAN, battlefield medicine, advanced metalurgy, the Internet, distributed communication networks, accelerated 3D graphics, nuclear power, light weight jet and gas turbines are just some of the technologies either spawned from defense spending or directly from war.
We use this every day, in the early 80s, what spawned the increase in computing power and graphics? It wasn't the hobby PC market and it wasn't the business world, the technologies to ramp up computing power were directly funded by DoD and Intelligence budgets, the KGB Archives talks about this as an example of when the West started to outstrip the USSR/Comintern.
And spending right now for the Global War on Terror is pushing the development of new technologies and more advanced systems. For example, gun shot wounds and injuries in combat. Vietnam pushed the development of the last generation of artificial limbs and this war is pushing the adaptation of new technologies as the standard. There are many more soldiers surviving wounds in Iraq and Afghanistan than in combat in Vietnam or the Second World War, new treatments and techniques are being developed and proven which will also work thier way into civilian medicine just as civilian gunshot treatments worked thier way into military treatments.
It is sad that things like artificial limbs, blood extenders, advanced sensors require military funding to move into a generation, but that is the reality of life. If the Feds say, "we need new artifical limbs for the public", there will be 15 years of talking about before anything moves, like when we started talking about HDTV, but if the DoD needs something, they will throw the money out and something will get done.
As for taking money away from military contractors, it's just another form of State support for engineering and practical sciences, why not spend the money? Without military contractors we'd not have turbofan powered 777s, we'd not have the Interstate Highway System, we'd not have CT scanners.
Re:How do they feel? (Score:3, Insightful)
So you are saying that if the military didn't exist none of those things would have been invendted by private enterprise.
A dubious claim. Hell for all you know even cooler things could have been invented without the
Re:How do they feel? (Score:3, Insightful)
"A dubious claim. Hell for all you know even cooler things could have been invented without the shroud of secrecy."
Perhaps a dubious claim. However, when you look at the spikes of development that occur during times of war, the claim seems less so. Look at the development of the airplane in the succession of wars. Of course, we mussn't forget the Cold War, which included huge amounts of
Re:How do they feel? (Score:3, Insightful)
What you are merely saying is that the military needed those things before private enterprise did. You can rest assured that if and when they are needed private enterprise seems to be able to innovate.
There's a difference, though. Private enterprise is good at innovating on small, relatively inexpensive things, or on things with a clear, short-term ROI. Private enterprise is not good at funding costly, large-scale research into a technology that may very well not pan out. Not that it never happens, bu
Re:How do they feel? (Score:3)
I've got another theory for you. How about it's because the winners of that war pumped today's equivalent of trillions of dollars into rebuilding the infrastructur
Re:How do they feel? (Score:4, Insightful)
Eh?
Just try googling for 'Record Oil Profits' one of these days.. you think that maybe those American People didnt get any benefits?
What about 'Iraq Contracts', hm.. plenty of American People got rich there too..
Re:How do they feel? (Score:2)
Should I call this pacifism? Arrrg, I don't mind!
GPL? (Score:2, Informative)
And this new happens on the same day Honda made a self-driven car! Today is just full of coincidences.
Re:GPL? (Score:2)
And this new happens on the same day Honda made a self-driven car! Today is just full of coincidences.
Unless they're selling the vehicles, they don't need to release the source code to the public. Only people using the vehicles need to have access to the source code.
Re:GPL? (Score:5, Funny)
sed 's/Iraq/Iran/g' *.c
/etc/init.d/ugv reload
make install
Oops (Score:3, Funny)
$ make install
war.c: In function `analyze_country':
war.c:42: warning: variable `Iran' might possess nuclear weapons
I wouldn't be surprised if iRobot did release it (Score:2, Interesting)
Oh, and as for the government? This is the same government which released BRL-CAD [sourceforge.net] and NASA World Wind [sourceforge.net], and sponsored the development of the Reiser filesystem [namesys.com] and OK WebServer [okws.org] (kicks Apache in the ass for dynamic sites) among countless other open source projects. Oh, and heard of SELinux [nsa.gov]? From the big bad NSA?
Re:GPL? (Score:5, Funny)
You only have to release the source code to people you distribute the hardware to. (If you always distribute the source code with any purchase, there's no need for a 'public release').
This does, however, raise an interesting question: Does physical capture of a UGV classify as 'distribution' requiring a source-code disclosure?
More importantly, would enemy lawyers applying for a source-code release order be declared 'unlawful combatants' and shipped off to Guantanimo for 5 years of cross examination?
Re:GPL? (Score:5, Interesting)
LOL. The GPLv3 does not seem to explicitly cover this case either. My take would be that distribution needs to be intentional for the rules governing full source code disclosure to apply. Otherwise, a thief entering the premises of a bank's EDP department and leaving with tapes containing program binaries would be entitled to copies of the source code if the programs were based on GPL code.
my guess would be .... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:my guess would be .... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:my guess would be .... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:my guess would be .... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:my guess would be .... (Score:5, Funny)
Now here's a question:
If the military distributed their binaries as part of the software controlling a missile. Would they have to include source code in the warhead?
Re:my guess would be .... (Score:2, Funny)
"Well Jerry we've gotta comply with the GPL so by all means burn the source to a CD-R, slip it into a warhead, and deliver it to them."
Re:my guess would be .... (Score:5, Funny)
No, it would suffice to include with the warhead a written offer, good for at least three years, to give any third party, for a charge no more than the cost of physically performing source distribution, a complete machine-readable copy of the corresponding source code.
(see the GPL [gnu.org], section 3b)
Re:my guess would be .... (Score:3, Informative)
Why would they give anything back? Are they going to re-distribute it?
Re:my guess would be .... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:my guess would be .... (Score:4, Insightful)
In other news, the military uses Goodyear tires, and Goodyear tire developers are currently mulling the ethical implications.
Re:my guess would be .... (Score:2, Insightful)
I guess I'd feel about the same as I would if I had discovered the laws of motion and used them to explain the motion of the planets, only to find out they were useful to the artillary experts to explain the motion of shells:
"Yeah. So? You want I should feel bad about fire and the wheel too? How about rocks, you want I should feel bad about rocks?"
I didn't build the goddamed thing. I built science. It's not even close to an issue for my conscience.
KFG
Re:my guess would be .... (Score:2, Insightful)
I support the troops and I feel a lot more comfortable having cute little OS in charge that lets say an OS with a questionable reputation.
Well... (Score:3, Interesting)
As for distribution - militaries exchange technology. The British buy from the Americans and vice versa, for example. That will certainly be covered by the GPL, which means first-tier allies of the US are likely to get hold of such code at some point.
It's unclear what this would mean for the - uh - dod
Re:my guess would be .... (Score:2)
Except they don't HAVE to give anything back (Score:2)
Re:my guess would be .... (Score:4, Informative)
1) There is an open source initiative to share code between government contractors. I don't recall the name, it hadn't really taken off when I was doing contract work.
2) The robot may run Linux, but that doesn't mean that any of its sensitive code is GPL'd. They might just be using the OS.
3) iRobot is Rodney Brook's company. Rodney Brooks is the director of the computer science and artificial intelligence laboratory at MIT. A good deal of what this robot does may or may not be found in tech from that lab, most of which is probably published in publicly available academic journals. Even if this specific robots software is not, Linux enthusiasts can find all kinds of papers on robotics work and implement it in Linux. Want a start? I've done some research on the topic in the past, was a member of a DARPA Grand Challenge Team, and am looking for future research in the area. I can give you a stack of papers to get you started.
Linux Kicks Ass (Score:3, Funny)
Slogan... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Slogan... (Score:2)
Fixed that for ya. Since, you know, this is going to get procured through the gov't bureaucracy.
/side note: this gator will run on JP8 (jet fuel) [af.mil]
Re:Slogan... (Score:2)
Penguins may have wings, but they CAN'T FLY.
http://despair.com/limitations.html [despair.com]
Re:Slogan... (Score:2)
Oh yeah. I can just see it now --- the F42 emperor penguin!
(scaring the B'Jesus out of red herrings worldwide!)
DARPA? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:DARPA? (Score:2)
GPL Implications? (Score:2, Interesting)
That stands to reason, as the government is responsible for making the Copyright laws.
In the Blackberry/RIM case, the government can tell the court that it wants to keep on using the patented stuff, even though the court may say that the government hasn't bought the product from the guys that own the patent. The court will then order Blackberry
Re:GPL Implications? (Score:3, Insightful)
But, even if they do make changes to the kernel, I suspect they have some way of getting around the license.
Re:GPL Implications? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:GPL Implications? (Score:2)
Linux is a Kernel (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Linux is a Kernel (Score:2)
Yeah, because who's gonna trust Windows on their military equipemnt? [channel4.com]
Re:Linux is a Kernel (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyways, it's hilarious that the slashdot groupthink has grown to the levels that people actually think that -everyone- who participates in the Linux process and believes in the open-source concept also, then, must share some supposed common anti-war pacifism or some other such nonsense. Someone please explain to me how being pro-war (whatever that means) is against the "linux ideal". Or, did the submitted actually mean, "I wonder how the people who read slashdot and are generally anti-war but also generally pro-linux are going to react to this". I guess that doesn't roll the same way off the tongue, so a little leeway of poetic liscense is necessary. Even still, I don't remember only agreeing to a strict anti-war anti-republican anti-wiretapping oath of allegience before muddling around in the memory management code... but that's just me.. I might have missed it. For some reason I thought the open-source software movement was about quality code... and not about war.. I didn't realize what exactly I was signing up for when I installed Gentoo.
A military usage of our technology? Oh no! (Score:5, Funny)
Oh, that's nothing. They'll totally blow a gasket when they find out what the "D" in DARPA stood for. Perhaps a mass boycott of the internet will result.
Re:A military usage of our technology? Oh no! (Score:3, Insightful)
The best defense is a good offense.
cool!! (Score:3, Funny)
C'mon! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:cool!! (Score:2)
better bots then men (Score:2)
Re:better bots then men (Score:2)
"The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield, or at sea. They will be fought in space... or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by small robots. And as you go forth today remember always your duty is clear: To build and maintain those robots. Thank you."
Feelings (Score:2)
Wipe them out... all of them.
How does Einstein feel about the bomb? (Score:5, Insightful)
One argument would be: If I don't figure it out, someone else will come along later on. So by not discovering dangerous stuff it merely prolongs the danger.
A good example would be genetic research, which bears huge potential as well as risks.
IMHO researchers should not stop researching altogether, but be more sensitive and think about possible missuse beforehand. Also they should be much more vocal about the possible dangers that come with using the knowledge they helped to gain.
Re:How does Einstein feel about the bomb? (Score:2)
I don't think scientists should stop researching or slow it significantly except in the absolute most extreme cases. More important is that scientists work with social leaders, other scientist and politicians to develop a framework to direct these technologies to serve the public good. That can go through a
Re:How does Einstein feel about the bomb? (Score:2)
Re:How does Einstein feel about the bomb? (Score:3, Insightful)
I call bullshit. Your view of the world is too simplisitic. Researchers should do research and leave the politics to the politicians. Life is never as simple as you make it out to be. Every single invention of the last 3000 years can be misused in the wrong hands. Working metal created weapons as easily as it created farming tools.
Re:How does Einstein feel about the bomb? (Score:2)
That just brings more attention to it though. 'With great knowledge comes great responsibility', 'There is no knowledge that is not power', etc. Insight is a double edged sword, and everyone has different ethics about it. Theres no 'right answer', just a bunch of opinions.
An important point (Score:5, Interesting)
Not all inventions are products of warfare or hostility. In general, inventions are a product of need, with greater need yielding greater inventions. War generates need, so all wars will see inventiveness increase, but need does not require war. It is a one-way relationship.
Should the military use GPLed technology? Provided they honor the license and the spirit, yes. I believe they should. In fact, I'd almost prefer it if it were mandatory. Why? Because if you share what you are doing - even with a limited few - and reduce the secrecy, you will also reduce the sort of paranoia that tends to lead to conflict. If you look at the recent war with Iraq and the building tensions with Iran, what is the common factor? Secrecy on all sides, paranoia on all sides, resulting in tension and finally hostilities. Furthermore, it is between highly unequal forces, leading to the notion of an eventual "victory". Near-equal forces, as existed in the "Cold War", are much keener to avoid conflict. GPLing the armed services, therefore, could be one step towards reducing the need for military interventions.
Then there's the "viral" nature of the GPL. Again, this assumes that the GPL is honored in spirit and in letter. The technology will be sold to close allies, who can then alter the sourcecode for their own needs - within that particular system and for other devices. Those other devices will therefore carry GPLed code. Eventually, through enough such steps, the code will reach dual-purpose technology. Probably pretty quickly, too. When that happens, all of the improvements will flood back into the civilian world.
Finally, I believe that there are members of the armed services who value the Open Source community and want to sustain it. The military, more than anyone else, know how to make software secure. In this day and age, with viruses, trojans and worms running rampant, I certainly think that the military could play a major role in reducing or eliminating malware. They know more about trust systems, authentication of information, controlling access without debilitating operations, fault tolerence in hostile environments, high volume information processing without inflicting DDoS attacks on themselves, etc, than anyone else. That knowledge, donated back into the F/OSS community, could revolutionise computing as we know it. I don't think it can hurt to give them the opportunity.
Yes, Einstein regretted the bomb. Arguably, nuclear weapons technology was a bit of a mistake - it wasn't needed to get Japan to surrender and has opened up more cans of worms across the world than I care to imagine. Arguably, though, it was inevitable. There have been natural runaway reactions, so someone would have discovered how to cause one eventually through simple geology. Either that, or through a nuclear reactor accident.
(Knowing more about the nature of critical mass reactions may actually have prevented far worse accidents than have been caused through malice. We'll never know the answer to that one, but it seems a possibility.)
Uncontrolled nuclear explosions, through proposed derivatives of the Orion Project, may yet have a valuable function in space exploration, too, in a way that might not be practical by other means. When people say that something can cut both ways, they usually mean that there's a negative side to something appearing positive. What they forget is that the statement doesn't stop there. It also means that - if you choose to seek it out - there can be a positive side to something that appears negative.
I'm not sa
Re:An important point (Score:3, Informative)
The Indus Valley was seized by force by Aryan tribes, but the culture of those people did survive. A blend of Indus Valley philosophy with contemporary Aryan religious thought was put forward by a renegade prince who became a monk, by the name of Shakyamun
Damn proud (Score:3, Insightful)
I think it's great. We're talkin' about a frickin' cart here, not Giant Robo [wikipedia.org], and I'd rather have the Army use Linux than give some contractor 2 billion dollars to develop an operating system from scratch.
The military uses Linux!?! OMG! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The military uses Linux!?! OMG! (Score:2)
You heartless bastard! Without the trolling and flamebait articles the pageviews would go down. Do you want Taco & the gang to have to get a day job instead of being in the totally rad position of being one of the only bloggers without a day job? Of course slashdot isn't really even a blog since most bloggers contribute a bit of original commentary and/or other content.
HAHAHA! (Score:3, Funny)
Excuse my French, but SUPER-FUCKING-COOL.
I eagerly await our new, Linux based Robotic F/OSS Overlords!
HAHAHAHAHA
For some reason, this joke feels funnier this time.
UGV good, DRM bad? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:UGV good, DRM bad? (Score:2, Insightful)
No, I think you've completely misconstrued the "average" opinion. It has nothing to do with killing people, and "killing people" isn't the metric by which the "freedom" of software is judged... that is an arbitrary line you've drawn because of your own personal political agenda. The linux kernel is about a good, free, operating
Re:UGV good, DRM bad? (Score:3, Insightful)
First of all, basically everyone recognizes the right of the military to use Linux; heck, anyone, whether good or evil, has an
All tools lead to porn and/or war (Score:2)
Most every sword has two edges. It all
Neat vehicle (M-Gator) (Score:2)
As a former soldier... (Score:5, Funny)
"It looks like you are attempting a center-of-mass shot at 250 meters. Would you like help?
O Get help taking the shot.
O Just take the shot without help.
O Get help relocating your target, who is long-gone by the time you've finished mousing around this lame-assed help interface."
Wow, a device to save lives sure sucks (Score:3, Interesting)
Considering all it does is run a patrol and alert when people are coming INTO a base presumably up to something dastardly - I imagine it would feel pretty good to deploy something like that would help save lives.
Would it help the submitter if the first deployment were to patrol a buidling full of bunny rabbits and baby chicks to keep wolves at bay?
DARPA (Score:2)
Linux vs. Anything Else (Score:5, Funny)
-OS X would simply look too damn sleek and sexy for military use
-Windows
*Blue Screen of Death (not helpful in tactical situations)
*As mentioned before, Clippy would probably be a liability in the field
*Do you really want something like Sasser to cripple the military?
*In a battlefield situation is one Tuesday a month enough?
-The proprietary Diebold voting machine system
*hahahahhahahahahaha
-Arm this thing with some serious firepower and "rm -rf" means something
-Arm this thing and alias pWn="sudo rm -rf
-BeOS just flashes the things headlights
Oh? (Score:3, Insightful)
Isn't that the point? Free as in speech, not as in beer means that sometimes someone might do something with your creation that you don't like or agree with. You can't have your cake and eat it, too.
This looks like a really bad idea. (Score:2, Insightful)
1) It cannot climb stairs.
2) It cannot traverse rocky or uneven territory (unless there is a flat platform to follow)
3) Sooner or later, a software bug is going to turn "Automous Robotic Follow Mode" into the military version of "Carmageddon" as it runs down the soldiers in front.
4) Enemy soldiers are going to have a convenient aim point for rifle-grenades and similar whenever they hid, because this big ugly robot is going to follow them right up to their hiding place.
5) Whi
Guns don't kill people.... (Score:2, Funny)
Unmanned my arse. (Score:5, Informative)
In any event the "practical" uses of this thing aren't practical at all! I mean, it's cool and all, but there is no way in hell the military is going to let these things roam around Iraq unmanned. They will never leave eyesight.
Consider my deployment in Iraq. My Marine Reserve unit built a 100 mile temporary fuel supply line from Kuwait up into southern central Iraq. Every few miles along this pipeline at "booster" stations a fire team of Marines were stationed to man the pumps. Every day a manned convoy would leave the central logistical support area and resupply the troops along the line with food, water, mail, ammo, etc.
Here's what would happen if the Military let this thing re-supply the troops autonomously.
1.) By the 3rd out of 17 booster stations all the good MRE's would be rat-fucked out of the boxes.
2.) By the 4th booster, all MRE's would be gone and somone would have pissed in the remaining water.
3.) The next day, when the thing hadn't come home and booster stations 6 through 17 called in wondering where their water was, a convoy would find it between booster station 5 & 6 with no engine, no wheels, and no usable sheetmetal left.
4.) The bedouins across the way would have an oxcart with brand new wheels a new engine on their generator and a new green metal patch on the roof of their tent.
So, it's really not unmanned. It's only a toy that Marines are going to be responsible to look after, take care of, and never let out of their sight. I suppose it could be useful to carry things while you are on a patrol, but that's what your pack is for anyway.
If you want to quibble... (Score:3, Interesting)
I feel exactly like... (Score:3, Interesting)
I feel like Einstein after the two A-bombs on Japan. I feel like Mikhail Kalashnikov seeing his designer gun on TV where it was used to pump up a couple of hundred kids.
Seriously, what's wrong with Linux being used in this project? You a Windows user man?
Feel? (Score:5, Insightful)
The same I feel about Linux servers being used for spam: I'd like to slowly disembowl the spammers, but what does the OS (by definition a general-purpose tool) have to do with that?
Idealist aren't necessarily pacifists (Score:5, Insightful)
Forget Linux, what about the engine,platform (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:"Freedom Isn't Free" Software (Score:3, Insightful)
"The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic research."
Its part of Freedom; freedom to do anything with it they want. Think of it like free will. If a God gave it to people, then they were free to do stuff that he didn't like, but thats part of the package deal.