> The words "Government" and "Open Source" triggered a question that I
> meant to ask a long time ago. I was talking with someone in the know
> and he mentioned that any (except where security is concerned) code
> paid for by the Federal (and possibly State) Government is open to us
> -the people who paid for the code through taxes.
This is true, to a certain extent. The idea is, say there's a research
project. The project is funded by government dollars in some way
(research grant, DARPA project, etc.). The outcome of this project/
research, possibly including source code, is to be made available. Now,
it isn't necessarily made available for free, and you can't necessarily
redistribute it after the fact.
One package that comes to my mind is Macsyma. This was a system used in
mathematics, but I can't remember all the details (something like
solving sets of equations, calculus, etc.... similar to Mathematica and
Maple), that was written in Lisp. We (the math department) ordered a
tape of this software, which was available because it was created as
part of a government funded research project (actually sponsored by the
DOE). Our cost was $3000. No, I didn't misplace the decimal point.
For our $3k, we got a 9-track tape (remember those?) with a tar of the
Macsyma source tree and a copy of Franz Lisp for the VAX and Sun-3. No
documentation, no "README" file, here's the tape and good luck.
So, while it's true that government paid for research is available, it
might not be available in a usable form, and it might not be available
for a reasonable cost. In the end, you pays your money and you takes
your chances.
-jan-
--
Jan L. Peterson
Semi-Unemployed "Computer Facilitator"
http://www.peterson.ath.cx/~jlp/resume.html
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