Government-Funded GPL Software

tgw writes "Tom Adelstein has an article in 'Linux Journal' on how a major milestone in US government-funded OSS recently passed - virtually unnoticed." Slashdot has mentioned this company earlier.

Comments

Public Funds, Public Software

[deutschemonte]

I think that all publicly funded software (except that with a security concern) should be released under the GPL. The people paid to have it made, the people should be the ones to benefit from it.

Is it just me...

[JayBlalock]

or is it inexpressibly sad that this ISN'T a no-brainer? That so many people apparently have no problem with the government taking our tax money and using it to fund projects that never see the light of day? Whatever the government uses my money for, unless releasing it endangers national security, it SHOULD be released for the public to use. We paid for it, after all. And the private sector can undoubtedly come up with applications for it the government didn't think of. Everybody wins.

Closed source+money==laws to extract more SW money

[cryophan]

Govt should fund open source SW, as closed source SW vendors will use their power and money to create laws that will close down OSS. That is really the blind spot of libertarians, free traders, etc--they fail to see to see how the so-called "free maeket" is really just a license to allow wealthy entities (e.g., corporations, etc) to manipulate and control lesser entities (i.e., all the rest of us so-called "humans".) If we want an increasingly high standard of living, then we have to engineer a government that will give it to us. Govt is just a machine. Designing machines has NEVER been easy. There aint no such as a free lunch, and a free market is certainly no free lunch, although it comes pretty close to that for corporations and the wealthy and upper income class.