Re: [Brint: Software--Who owns it?]

[fateman%ucbdali@Berkeley (Richard Fateman)]

The government's rights in software is generally stated in the contract
between a university and a government agency.  Often it says something
like the government has non-exclusive royalty free rights to use,
(copy, distribute, etc), developments.  If the gov't is not set up
to distribute to other gov't agencies, and/or makes no effort to
obtain the software in question, then the gov't ends up buying it from
the marketeers.  Sometimes, of course, the university refuses to cough
up the software, or provides it in (say) hard-copy only form.