This often a complicated case regarding competition law. In our neoliberal world giving away something for free that was subsidized is often seen as destroying market. The national CIO of Germany at one time recommended public bodies to us copyleft (also the EC opted for EPL) , rather than putting it into public domain. I also like this idea. However, this is fundamentaly different from the US. The German weather service even had to shutdown some functions in their free app due to a court order.
As a loophole, they ended up making the app paid as not constitute disloyal competition, which, depending on the angle makes sense: you have a competitor that you can actually never compete because regardless of what they do, their funding never runs out. It’s not a fair battle. On the other hand tho, wetter online were crying like little kids about an app that was doing what a government was supposed to do.
I would rather have a model where anyone can contribute and can see the code, if they want to, than a model, where there is "competition" of who can make the shittiest but most profitable broadcast system.
Thanks, I strongly feel that publicy-funded software should be at least open source if not public domain, but the market impact is a wrinkle I hadn't considered before.
