[Ericson2314]

Code directly written be the Government must be public domain. I'm not sure this is a step in the right direction, or a step backwards as it just pushes more software engineering to consultants.

(I've at least seen DARPA-funded work become open source. That's a good step.)

[cultus]

The big gotcha with that is that most government projects have collaborators in academia, NGOs, and/or industry. To a big extent, the public domain mandate doesn't apply if workers outside of the government contribute. Thus manuscripts or code often aren't public domain.

edit: Also publishers constantly "accidentally" claim copyright on public domain works (I'm looking at you, Elsevier). They never accidentally make something open-access.