raph: I respectfully disagree - new software developed with government funds *should* be released as public domain, just so long as there is no prohibition of government funds being used to improve existing GPL software.

This would allow everyone equal access, including proprietary developers and all flavors of free developers. If people want to make GPL'd derivatives, they are free to relicense it. Likewise if a commercial developer or one of the BSD projects wants to incorporate code, they can do so too.

I wouldn't equate a recommendation to release government funded software as public domain as an attack on the GPL either, unless you happen to believe that *all* software should be GPL.