Why so sure the government wouldn't want to disclose the source?

Good article, with opinions of a good range of stakeholders. Whilst this article is US-centric I don't think the issues apply only in that region, there are similar issues in the UK, for example.

Whilst I fully support the use of FOSS in as many places as possible, I'm slightly concerned at the confidence shown that the US government would not want to disclose the source code to systems it has procured using public money (except for national security/protective marking issues, of course).

The government buys things, IT included, using public money, and there's often a view that because this is public money, the public are entitled to the benefits of spending their money, or that the public own the fruits of spending their money. As an example, there is continual pressure for the results of publicly-funded research to be made available (eg http://blog.okfn.org/2013/02/25/expanded-access-to-the-re...), or mapping data (http://nationalmap.gov/), to mention just two.

So I would not personally be surprised to see pressure put on the government at some point to disclose the contents of FOSS they have bought with public money, after all they have the right to do that under the GPL if they choose and aside from national security why should they refuse? Government contractors might not want to make those requests, put there could be pressure from other sources and interests for FOSS to appear difficult to work with in such environments.

For me it comes down to the point in the article -- as a contractor you've chosen to deliver a system using FOSS, saving yourself possibly hundreds of man-years of software design, development and support effort and therefore allowing you to make a competitive bid or increase your profit margin. Live with that choice and comply with the license to that software that *you chose*, or don't use it and bid with proprietary software -- the market will decide which is best.

(disclosure: I'm certainly no lawyer, and neither am I a US citizen so it's not my tax dollars I'm discussing!)