Oh sure, Washington state doesn't have any special interests opposing the GPL.
I personally am opposed to proprietary intellectual property from tax-payer funded research, but the unanswered question here is whether GPL or BSD licensing is "more free" and which should be used for government research. I don't know the answer to this. http://newsvac.newsforge.com/newsvac/02/10/23/1247236.shtml?tid=4 An anonymous reader writes: "Leaders of the New Democrat Coalition attempt to outlaw GPL. A call to sign off on explicit rejection of "licenses that would prevent or discourage commercial adoption of promising cyber security technologies developed through federal R & D." has been issued by Adam Smith, Congressman for the Ninth District in the State of Washington. It's already signed off on by Rep. Tom Davis(R-Va), Chairman of Government Reform Subcomittee on Technology, and Rep. Jim Turner (D-TX) Ranking Member of the same committee, with the backing of Rep. Jim Davis (D-FL), and Rep. Ron Kind (D-WI). It's a note to fellow New Democrats under the guise of protecting commercial interest's right to make money from the fruits of federal R & D, and to sign off on an attached letter to Richard A. Clarke, Chair of the President's Critical Infrastructure. They are attempting to convince Clarke, Chair of the President's that licensing terms such as "those in the GNU or GPL" are restrictive, preclude innovation, improvement, adoption and establishment of commercial IP rights. Let's take a look at the highlights: 1) They use the Internet, by virtue of TCP/IP, as "proof" of their thesis. 2) They state that you cannot improve OR adopt OR commercialize GPL software. 3) They state that you cannot integrate GPL'd software with proprietery software. 4) They say you should keep publicly funded code away from the public sector, so that proprietary interests can make money from the work. 5) They equate a lack of understanding of the GPL with valid reasoning against it. (continued in article) Slashdot: Congress Members Oppose GPL for Government Research http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/10/23/1320238&mode=thread&tid=117
