[RLUG] Government code is public domain

[Dennis Bagley]

Saw this today on TechDirt and found the concept rather interesting.  So
I thought I'd share:

Dennis


Are All Government Designed Software Projects Open Source?

(Mis)Uses of Technology Contributed by Mike on Wednesday, November 23rd,
2005 @ 11:58AM
from the raises-some-serious-questions dept.
Brian Phipps digs deep into an article about open source efforts and
pulls out an interesting point that's mostly buried in the story: "A
Forbes article on open source reports that Mission Viejo firm Medsphere
used the Freedom of Information Act to get the source code for federal
hospital management software "developed at taxpayer expense." They are
now using that software as part of their commercial open source product
called OpenVista. Is this a new/valid/ethical way to get source code for
a start-up? There must be tens of thousands of Federal applications out
there that could have commercial potential. How does the US taxpayer
benefit if these apps are exploited via FoIA and commercialized--since
we paid for them in the first place. If they were all GPL'd that would
be OK, but it's not clear that that's the case." This certainly does
raise an awful lot of questions. Getting access to the source code is
one thing -- assuming it's then open source is another. Anyone have more
details on how this project went from FoIA request to open source
software?




Here's the original link:
http://techdirt.com/articles/20051123/1152236_F.shtml
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