Govt Source Code Policy

[Mark Komarinski]

I was under the impression that code written by the government was public domain.  You and I (and private companies) paid the taxes that generated that code, so releasing it in anything less than a public domain is doing a disservice.
Back when I worked for the Department of Veterans Affairs there were companies that took the VA code, modified it for non-VA hospitals, and offered to provide the software and support for a fee.  I didn't find a problem with it then, nor do I now.  That's what public domain means.
-Mark
-------- Original message --------From: "Greg Rundlett (freephile)" <greg at freephile.com> Date: 3/25/16  3:33 PM  (GMT-05:00) To: blu <discuss at blu.org>, GNHLUG <gnhlug-discuss at mail.gnhlug.org> Subject: Govt Source Code Policy 
The US Fed. Govt. is proposing a pilot program to release at least 20% of newly developed custom code as 'OSS'.  https://sourcecode.cio.gov/  They're accepting comments now.  And since it's hosted on GitHub, you "comment" via the issue queue, and you can also fork the project and issue a pull request.

I forked it and created a pull request. https://github.com/WhiteHouse/source-code-policy/pulls proposing to use the term 'Free Software' in place of 'Open Source' 
If the government actually goes through with 'open sourcing' their work, it's actually a giant corporate handout because companies will have greater access to publicly funded works that they can then incorporate into proprietary works.
What do you think?

Greg Rundletthttps://eQuality-Tech.comhttps://freephile.org

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