Software as a product line offers the right benefits to long life-cycle military programs

摘要

It's only been in the past five years that Eclipse and Linux evolved from novelties and "Ridiculous!" by opponents, into de facto products in defense system development and deployment. They started out as grassroots movements to fulfill a need: In the case of Eclipse, it was to create a standard framework for development tools; in the case of Linux, it was to break the control of proprietary operating system companies. Today, you can't buy a mainstream COTS toolset that doesn't offer Eclipse plug-ins. And you'd be hard pressed not to find some Linux floating around in every military program - either during the IRAD stage or actually deployed in-system. The same will happen with software as a product line, a methodology that governs conception, creation, testing, deployment, and code sustainment.