🚀 go-pugleaf

Bob Cain suggests that we should have unlimited rights to work funded
by the government.

That we do not is the result of a policy determination that the overall
economy and technological advancement are better served by the current
system than by one in which certain inventions would not be made nor
developed without government funding.

The best example I know is the 'Technical Objectives Document" program
by the Air Force in the early '50's, which funded many of the size,
speed, and storage breakthroughts in the computer field. Without
such massive taxpayer funding we'd be about 20 or more years back
in the computer field, since even the private giants like RCA
and Univac at the time couldn't afford such RDT and E on their
own.

Without technological protection, though, companies would have found
other uses for the scientists and engineers they did have, and there'd
have been no demand pull to generate the army of graduates during
that period to do the large-scale work.

This whole issue was the subject of a massive public policy debate
in the '50s, and as a nation we decided we were better off allowing
private rights in government-funded programs, as long as the government
itself had unlimited rights for Federal purposes.

Robert's position was well and brilliantly argued by economic and
policy experts on his side of the debate, some of whom had
dazzling credentials. They lost.

-- 
David Sternlight
(pgp 2.0 and ripem public keys available on request)