If Software Is Funded from a Public Source, Its Code Should Be Open Source

Works created by the United States Government are not covered by copyright in the US, effectively making them public domain _in the US_. See https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/17/105

"But—", you say, "—the code the NSA is publishing has a license attached!" Indeed, that confused me too, until I found the answer at https://www.cendi.gov/publications/FAQ_Copyright_30jan18.htm...:

>…copyright exclusion for works of the U.S. Government is not intended to have any impact on protection of these works abroad (S. REP. NO. 473, 94th Cong., 2d Sess. 56 (1976)). Therefore, the U.S. Government may obtain protection in other countries depending on the treatment of government works by the national copyright law of the particular country. Copyright is sometimes asserted by U.S. Government agencies outside the United States.

So, Public Domain within the US, and Copywritten (but OSS-licensed) outside of the US.

My understanding is that copyright in EU countries is much more complicated. For example, apparently the view of the Eiffel Tower at night is copyrighted. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M16CGK1T9MM

As for anything Classified in the US, there are laws controlling distribution. So, take something GPL-licensed: If you take, use, and modify the software, you are not required to provide the code unless you distribute the product to others.

See the question "Since U.S. Government works are not protected by copyright in the U.S., are all U.S. Government works publicly available without restriction in the U.S.?" from https://www.cendi.gov/publications/FAQ_Copyright_30jan18.htm... (it's pretty long, and has a _lot_ of references, so I'm not reproducing it here)

Of course, you may argue that, if a hacking tool is pushed to a remote system, and that hacking tool was made using GPL-licensed code, then the source should be distributed with the hacking tool. Also, note I said GPL, _not_ AGPL. For both of those cases, I don't know if the laws governing Classified material trump those governing Copyright (I'd bet they do), and what International law has to say.

If you believe in this enough, you're better off leaving the U.S. IMHO.

If you disagree, I recommend visiting a country on the verge of complete collapse. Do that, then think about how good we have it, think about how many people want to take that way of life away at all costs. Part of being an adult is striking a balance between your ideals, a comfortable life and letting one or the other take over.

No, works made by or under hire for the federal government should be public domain, from a copyright standpoint, not exclusively owned but licensed under an open source license.

But on the other hand, I think your real question has nothing to do with ownership or licensing, but whether or not they should be publicly disclosed. In many cases the answer is “no”, but lots of government work that is in the public domain from a copyright perspective is also not subject to unrestricted publicly disclosure (and may also be classified.)

But arguably the licensing can work the same way as disclosure; presumptively, all government software should be open source, just as presumptively all government records are publicly disclosable; there may be limited defined exceptions for the former as there are for the latter, and decisions to treat software as within an exception should be reviewable by courts just as witholding material from FOIA disclosure is.

Any more nefarious things that can be done with your Linux OS server talking to your Open Source Chromium / Firefox web browser?

Open Source doesn't necessarily mean less secure.