This is a good idea and while I agree with the principle that publicly funded software should be open source, I have to imagine that it's simply just more complicated than this. I know that in many cases software, government or otherwise, is built upon components that may or may not be Free or Open Source and those may in fact be the right tool for the job. Now an argument that the components built as a result of public funding should be open-source would be a reasonable one in my opinion. There however is the complication that the government might claim it's owned by them rather than the public and closed-source for reasons of keeping it out of the hands of foreign governments, hackers, or whatever. -joe