Earlier quoted context omitted.
So, if I have a summer intern who is paid by the government, and helps on my otherwise non-government-funded project, then is that enough to trigger the requirement? Or, if I use a government facility, like a supercomputing center, then that also trigger the release requirement? Even if no money changes hands? What about a government network? It sounds very tricky. If I get a government grant to work on a project, an…
No, it isn't. You calculate the fair market value of the public resources you used, and subtract what you paid the public for them. If it is positive, you have a publicly-supported project. So if you use that government-paid intern for several hours, you ought to pay their agency or department $7.25 for each. You pay for what you use, and there's no problem. If you work in a government-built facility, and you pay ren…
Which is very hard for things with no market.
I use government libraries. They are free to me. What is the fair market value of that? There are private and subscription libraries, so it's not like no market exists.
What is the fair market value of time on Hubble?
> "if you use that government-paid intern for several hours ... You pay for what you use"
I think you mean $0, not the $7.25 you estimated. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, an internship is "for the benefit of the intern", not the company. An internship is not supposed to improve the bottom line of a company. An intern may even get in the way, and cause negative value.
And that's my point. The public gains more than can easily be counted by simple, direct market valuation. What is the worth of having students with industrial training? What is the worth of having broad public access to the literature?
Or, for a more real-world case, companies might not be interested in tropical disease research because the revenue won't justify the development costs. But the US military would like to be able to send troops to places with an endemic tropical disease, so they want some way to be able to prevent or treat the disease. The US foreign diplomatic policy would also like the good-will of those countries. The US could, by subsidizing tropical disease research, tilt the "fair market value" so is more weighted towards its military and diplomatic policy goals.
That assumes that part of the corporate revenue comes from subsidy, and part comes from being able to sell the drug on the market. But now, if part of the revenue comes from the government, the company cannot seek patent protection. This reduces the profit expectation, which means the government will need to subsidize the project even more to get a company to be interested in the effort.