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Congress Members Oppose GPL for Government Research

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the your-tax-dollars-at-work dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Rep Jim Davis(D-FL), Tom Davis (R-Va), Ron Kind (D-WI), and Adam Smith (D-WA) are trying to outlaw the gpl. Let's write to them and show them that we didn't elect these guys to screw us over." The issue here isn't the GPL in general, it's specifically what sort of license government-funded research ought to have. Code written directly by Federal government employees has no copyright whatsoever and is therefore roughly equivalent to a BSD-type license; but if the government pays a non-employee to write code, there are no firm requirements or guidelines on how that code ought to be licensed. Prudence suggests that since it's our money funding the research, we ought to make sure the public gets some return from the endeavor.

5 of 670 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Exactly by dattaway · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    I agree. All new research should be GPL licensed so that it will be free for all generations to impliment.

  2. Re:Very interesting... by kindbud · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    This is an odd thing, considering that its the Democrats trying to pass this, as something along the lines of the GPL is more of a Democratic licensing scheme. Id expect that the Republicans would be the ones to do something like this in support of big business.

    Ring.....

    Ring.....

    Ring.....

    Clue phone. It's for you.

    "BOTH PARTIES STAND FOR THE INTERESTS OF BIG BUSINESS."

    *click*

    --
    Edith Keeler Must Die
  3. Re:GPL congress! by soapvox · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Picking the lesser of evils, Moron A or Moron B, we need more geeks running for office I tell ya!

  4. Re:Very interesting... by JordanH · · Score: 2, Flamebait
    This is NOT Flamebait, you head-buried-in-the-sand Democratic Moderators.

    Go ahead, mod me down, that's what the +1 is for, getting past the biases of the Moderator pool, IMO.

    When will people wake up and see that it's the Democrats that have been, for years, working in the interests of big business. Sure, the Republicans do it to, but you at least everybody expects it from them.

    The '80s were supposed to be the decade of the mega-merger, but the Clinton Administration made Reagan look like Nader on this score.

    During the Clinton Administration:

    • The largest bank/insurance merge in history, illegal at the time it was executed, but ignored by the Justice Department to give them time to change the law - The Citibank/Travelers merger.
    • HUGE Petrochemical mergers - Exxon/Mobile, BP/Amoco, Shell/Texaco US marketing and refining. Probably the three largest such mergers in history.
    • Unprecedented media mergers, Disney/ABC, CBS/Viacom, AOL/TW, others. The rapid shrink of local media choice, growth of ClearChannel, Newspaper consolidations, etc.
    • The Enron, Worldcom, Tyco shenanigans mostly took place on Clinton's watch. All of these companies were huge contributors to Democratic (and Republican, to be fair) campaigns.

    People need to wake up. The Democrats are not out for the 'little guy' any more than the Republicans.

  5. Re:cough*incorrect*cough by StillaCoward · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Might they be opposed to it because the GPL is genuenly a bad choice for publicly funded code?

    I mean, coporations pay taxes too. They pay a large portion to the tax burden. They deserve access to the fruits of their tax dollars as well....

    Try to look at this objectively.