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Congress Members Oppose GPL for Government Research
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.
let's gpl congress so that we can all modify the code and prevent all the stupid laws that get passed!
track7.org has all kinds of interesting stuff!
With a guy like Adam Smith influencing them with all that invisible hand crap, what do you expect.
Our great Wisconsin representative Ron Kind is a aol user RonKind2002@aol.com . This makes it obvious that somebody is targeting the most ignorant.
Got Code?
"The government is going to outlaw the GPF! All copies of Linux will be confiscated!"
Moron. Outlawing the GPF would get rid of Windows.
Let's write to them and show them that we didn't elect these guys to screw us over.
Y'know, it's notsomuch that. We know these guys are going to screw us over. . . nowadays, I just vote for the candidate that promises lubrication.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
Exactly and following that logic, when the government goes shopping for software it is people who buys it as well. So if the government buys licenses to MS Office, then it should be put in public domain.. :-)
Couldn't get there. Dunno if that's the firewall kicking in...or...the Illuminati.
You have to give them credit for subtlety. Insisting that the taxpayer receive some value from the code cleverly ignores the value of the code itself.
Of course, having seen a few lines of taxpayer-funded code, disclosing some of the 'less mature' examples thereof might not help the funding drives of any politicians...
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Well then you are doing something wrong. Get thee to a political fund raiser :)
"it is essential that the National Strategy affirm federal tradition by explicitly rejecting licenses that would prevent or discourage commercial adoption of promising cyber security technologies developed through federal R&D."
Its not clear to me that this eliminates GPL, but it sure as s--t does imply that restrictive patents that allow "commercial adoption" by a single company are Good. By implication, we can also deduce that for a single company to collect (er, um, "extort"?) licensing fees for patents obtained in such ways is a good thing as well.
And when Mr Smith is the (can there be any doubt?) well paid Senator from Washington. I imagine he'll be well supplied with guaranteed perennial assistance (cash, checks, gifts, prepaid investigative trips to (Unnamed Tropical Resort) to investigate claims that the Bikini Industry there is illegally underpricing their product in competition with Legitimate American Corporate Interests (LACI - pronounced "lackey")). With (to continue that sentence) that assistance coming in from Those Who Must Be Obeyed, will there be any real surprise when he initiates the passage of a Law - requiring everyone to use The Only Software System Around We Like Or Trust ("TOSS-A-LOT")?
(Hmm, the "Microsoft" act. "Mandatory Iliminiation of Computing Rights Or Satanic (o?) Foundations of Terrorism". Needs work, but it shoul appeal to the "anti-terrorist" ad campaign, the "Satanic" obsession of the Satanicly obsessed (possessed?), and the Illuminati who are undoubtedly funding it all. By the time he gets to be senator I'm sure they'll work it out.)