<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_extra"><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Mar 25, 2016 at 4:59 PM, Greg Rundlett (freephile) <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:greg@freephile.com" target="_blank">greg@freephile.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div>Code written by Govt. employees is 'Public Domain', meaning specifically exempted from copyright. <div><br></div><div>However, most? government software is written by contractors, and not published or shared. I don't know for sure, but I imagine that a large amount of that work is under a proprietary license. I think it's a giant step in the right direction to get the Govt. to publish, and reuse (our) software because we are paying for it once already. However, I think that the primary beneficiaries will be the software ISVs and VARs that will essentially have another 'github' of govt. software to grab and bring in-house. The same problem is reflected at GitHub where the majority of new projects are selecting non-free licenses now whereas a few years ago GPL was the most popular license in the world.</div></div></blockquote></div><br><div><div>It's overwhelmingly proprietary. In fact, when responding to RFQs/RFPs, the contracting
agency asks for a clear description of what the IP rights are, who gets
what kind of ownership and transferability, and so forth. Not just software, but the products of research, inventions as a result of the work, methods, applications, you name it.<br><br></div>When
I wrote the proposal for BlocksCAD, I made certain that all the work
would be contractually obligated to be open source. Thankfully I was
able to get it released GPL before I left the company. I was going to release the server side AGPL, but I got some serious pushback on that one, and it seems like it's still not open at all. Last I was involved, the software and training materials were going to be added to the DARPA Open Catalog (<a href="http://opencatalog.darpa.mil/">http://opencatalog.darpa.mil/</a>) but it looks like that might have fallen by the wayside, unfortunately.<br><br></div>An
interesting thing I learned in the process: at the very least, DARPA
loves open source. They can feel safer using it on secure systems
because it can be verified, and it has a low "sustainment risk," that
is, the company can't suddenly decide to raise the price now that they
have a captive audience, and if the company goes under, the government
can keep using it without worrying about acquiring more licenses or
anything.<br></div></div>