By contrast there are already other good software packages that have been developed by our national laboratories, but they are really free. They are open source. They are not charging money again to use them. Look at MPICH2 for example, a powerful supercomputer software package available for free download which was developed by Argonne National Laboratory. On whose authority can Sandia really say their software package is different than Argonne's MPICH2, and not freely usable by the same public who funded the development of both software packages?
Shouldn't Sandia be compelled by Congress if necessary to freely share the results of their work, with all Americans, for any way Americans see fit to use it? America has a lot of enterprising people. They don't all work in academia and government. Check who made the software on your own computer.
How dare Sandia National Lab withhold the fruits of their labor from the people who paid for it. The poor behavior of some of America's national laboratories, in restricting the uses of their software after it is downloaded from their web sites, must be discontinued.
Americans and American businesses are the only ones who are needlessly suffering from the current US policies which are needlessly and inconsistently prohibiting the free use of America's own nonsensitive software developed at the Sandia National Labs and potentially many other software packages provided by America's nine other national laboratories.
To my Government: Let us fix this problem. All it takes is a policy change regarding the freedom to use national lab software which is already available for download on the Internet. No additional equipment costs or labor costs would be needed. In fact we can reduce the lawyer fees since we won't need quite so many restrictive software licenses to be written nor enforced by the lawyers working for our national laboratories.
References
http://www.jessrules.com/jess/FAQ.shtml
http://www.mcs.anl.gov/research/projects/mpich2/about/index.php?s=about
http://www.sandia.gov/news/resources/releases/2008/jessengine.html
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