[NTLUG:Discuss] Gov funded GPL'd code

[Cameron]

I story was posted to Slashdot today about an interview with Micros~1
CEO Steve Ballmer.  The next-to-last question is about Linux.  Here are
the relevant links:

  The Slashdot story
  http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/06/01/1658258&mode=thread

  The interview
  http://www.suntimes.com/output/tech/cst-fin-micro01.html

Let me quote the relevant Q&A here:

  Q: Do you view Linux and the open-source movement as a threat to
     Microsoft?

  A: Yeah. It's good competition. [...]  The only thing we have a
     problem with is when the government funds open-source work.
     Government funding should be for work that is available to
     everybody. Open source is not available to commercial
     companies. The way the license is written, if you use any
     open-source software, you have to make the rest of your
     software open source. If the government wants to put
     something in the public domain, it should. Linux is not in
     the public domain.  Linux is a cancer that attaches itself
     in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches.
     That's the way that the license works. 

Before you get your panties in a wad, note that when Ballmer says
"open-source" he means GPL'd source.  And the last part about Linux
being a cancer, it's probably better to think "GPL is a cancer..."  I
don't really think the "cancer" statement needs much discussion since
the GPL was designed to act that way.  Ballmer just uses "cancer" and
"virus" all the time make it sound evil.

I think the important issue here is his statement about government
funded, GPL'd projects.  What do you guys think about this?

IMNSHO, I agree with Ballmer on principle (*gasp*).  Government funded
software should be in the Public Domain, ie. there are absolutely no
restrictions on it's use.  If the government funded GPL'd projects, the
only people (ie. citizens) that could use the source code would be
people willing to GPL their derivative works.  Hmm...here's a short list
of some folks who wouldn't be able to use the governments work:  *BSD,
BeOS, Apple, Micros~1, Mozilla, Apache, XFree86, [insert any non-GPL
project here], and so on.

I've heard rumors of Micros~1 trying to persuade legislators to "outlaw"
GPL'd development within the departments of the US government.  I'm sure
our legislators could completely screw that up, but *in principle* I
agree with Micros~1's request.  Once the work is in Public Domain,
anybody can take it and whatever they want with it (IIRC).  Hence we
could take it and put it in a GPL'd program or into a proprietary
program.

The point is that the US government should fund work that is accessible
to *everyone*, not just to people that can work with the GPL.

I'd like to hear from some of you who have knowledge of what and how the
government funds certain projects.  I'm sure there are many software
packages that were developed with funding from the US government that
are now proprietary (ie. within a university).  But that's only a hunch.

Am I failing to make the distinction between government funded and
government developed software?  I'm not very clueful how much funding
the government does within our educational system.
-- 
cameron
[ Why is the word dictionary in the dictionary? ]