SuperCharging Innovation - Why The State Should Release Its Software As Open Source (Groklaw) [LWN.net]

SuperCharging Innovation - Why The State Should Release Its Software As Open Source (Groklaw)

Posted May 27, 2004 17:20 UTC (Thu) by stumbles (guest, #8796) [Link]

Overall I think that is a good idea. My tax dollars were spent for it's creation, as such
it should be returned to the tax payers. I would rather see it released as GPL than
any other type license. That way it ensures availability to all without a corporation
snagging it all. AFAIAC, the software company that produces the code has already
been compensated fairly because they won the contract to write it anyway. They do
not need to continue their free ride at my expense.

SuperCharging Innovation - Why The State Should Release Its Software As Open Source (Groklaw)

Posted May 27, 2004 19:07 UTC (Thu) by XERC (guest, #14626) [Link]

I live in EU, but I agree withe the idea.

SuperCharging Innovation - Why The State Should Release Its Software As Open Source (Groklaw)

Posted May 30, 2004 3:00 UTC (Sun) by tbird20d (subscriber, #1901) [Link]

Code written by or for US government agencies, or under grants funded by the US government, is supposed to be released to the public domain. Most of the time it is, but there are exceptions. I actually prefer this to releasing the software under GPL. It allows anyone (including both private citizens and commercial corporations) to use the code any way they see fit.

The GPL puts more restrictions on software than does the public domain. Thus, for example, I'm not sure it was appropriate for Donald Becker to release his early network drivers for Linux under GPL rather than place them in the public domain, since he wrote them in the context of a project at NASA. Since I've paid for the code once as a taxpayer already, I shouldn't have to pay for the code again (either in money or in code reciprocity.)

SuperCharging Innovation - Why The State Should Release Its Software As Open Source (Groklaw)

Posted May 31, 2004 0:09 UTC (Mon) by XERC (guest, #14626) [Link]

I'm currently too busy to look for a link, but
what regards to the VHDL simulation and synthesis, then
I have read about projects, that were funded by some US
government research grant, but the company, that wrote the
software by using the money, consideres the code as
their intellectual property and sells the licenses to the
software, just as if it were 100% their own commercial
product. Let's not look at the patents, that have been
granted to private companies, that have done it's research
under some government grant.

SuperCharging Innovation - Why The State Should Release Its Software As Open Source (Groklaw)

Posted Jun 3, 2004 21:18 UTC (Thu) by fjf33 (subscriber, #5768) [Link]

It depends on the contract that you have with the government. The contract can be writen so that what the government is REALY paying for is for a reaserch paper and presumably the IP was already there in the company. Say I have this new algorithm (sp.) which right now it is just in blocks and I submit a proposal for a Grant to implement it, and test how good it is compared to what is currently available out there. The government is really paying for the study and nothing else. The IP still belongs to me.

Almost always however, the government has a right to use the IP generated without paying royalties (usually capped in time) and in some cases it can allow a 3rd party to use it, even disclosing trade secrets.

A typical case was the Jeep back in WW2, the goverment opened a bid, and the winning company was not capable of making the quantities required for the war effort (in the governments mind), so their design was given to Ford to manufacture and the original company was given a contract to make trailers for the Jeep.

So... it is not a clear cut thing. I may have trade secrets (my own coding style that makes it imposible to do memory leaks), and I use that on a government program, the government should not make that information public since they did not pay for that development. It is a LOT simpler (less grey areas) in the physical world. I may have a special design of a widget that makes a satellite 1/2 the weight and the gov. pays me to build a satelite that can read the newspaper for orbit, that does not mean that I have to publish the design so that anyone has a complete design of my 1/2 weight satellite. People are still free to reverse engineer it but they need to buy it first (and with software we know all the EULAs that don't let you do that).

I am rambling a bit