Re: slightly off-topic: support open source for publically-funded research

[glen e. p. ropella]

At 04:39 PM 11/17/2001 -0800, you wrote:
> glen> My statement was that it makes no sense to *force* individual
> glen> projects to do this.  And, in fact, it could be deemed
> glen> unconstitutional to adopt it as policy.
>
> Er, on what grounds?  It seems to me that the funding agency can put
> just about any conditions on an award.  If the recipient doesn't like
> the conditions, they are free to refuse the project.  I don't see
> where force comes into the equation anywhere.

Well, I'm not going to claim to know anything about constitutional
law; but, it seems to me that it could be considered unconstitutional
to appropriate funds from the citizenry and then use those funds
without that citizenry's consent.  For any *particular* grant
managed by the NSF, say, to constrain the project to open source
would be above board because the citizenry has consented to
managing these projects on a case-by-case basis.  In fact, that's
simply the way it works and has worked for a long time.

However, to make a *policy* that requires the source to be publicly
licensed is a different statement.  It's changing, in a fundamental
way, the contract between the federally funded research agencies and
the citizenry who fund them.  And it's not clear to me that these
agencies were founded under the same pretext.  I would suggest that
if the citizenry really understood that their "hard earned" money
(forgive the spin, here...) was subsidizing hackers in Afghanistan,
that citizenry would reevaluate the contract it has with the
federally funded agencies.

DON'T read this to mean that I agree with the objection I'm putting
forth.  (God forbid.)  *I*, personally, agree that all software
written with US federal funds (including that the NSA generates)
should be GPLed.  But, I have lots of opinions that I wouldn't
coerce others into living under, this being one of them.


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glen e. p. ropella   =><=   H:831.335.4950  =><=  C:650.776.4616



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