Should Public Funds Mean Public Code?

Lisa points to this article on oreillynet with "two opposing viewpoints on whether all software created by publicly funded research should be licensed as open source, and the chance to weigh in yourself." Open-source software (under whatever license) seems to me like a good way to multiply the investment of tax dollars that public funding relies on, but the counterarguments offered here are interesting.

Comments

For the impatient

[einer]

The argument against:

Andrew argues that much of the code generated for scientific research is based on previously written, non-open source software, and this requirement would cause a huge amount of this research to be either abandoned or started from scratch.

It's hard to say...

[mystery_bowler]

I've done work for the civil court system and land records offices in my area. Their records - all of them - are public. But it's not like any of their information is "sensitive". Thus, open-sourcing any of their software doesn't present any real risk.

On the other hand, an organization like, say the NSA is publicly funded with American tax dollars. It would be impossible to say that open-sourcing their software wouldn't present any real risk.

It really is an organization-to-organization call.

This would mean all FBI source code would be open?

[Mustang Matt]

Wouldn't that mean that the FBI would have to open all of it's source code to anyone.

It has it's advantages but it also has it's disadvantages if that's the case.