Programmer Admits Stealing US Gov't Accounting Software Source Code

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from NetSecurity.org: "A Chinese computer programmer that was charged with stealing the source code of software developed by the U.S. Treasury Department pleaded guilty to the charge on Tuesday. The 33-year-old Bo Zhang, legally employed by a U.S. consulting firm contracted by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, admitted that he took advantage of the access he had to the Government-wide Accounting and Reporting Program (GWA) in order to copy the code onto an external hard disk and take it home." Just such things make me think that the default setting for software created with public money should be released with source code anyhow, barring context-specific reasons that it shouldn't be.

Re:Why?

[h4rr4r]

That seems like less harm then depriving the rightful owners of the code access, the american taxpayer.

Re:mixed ownership

[Maximum Prophet]

That's fine as long as the output of the software doesn't affect anyone, anytime. If the software has any effect on the government's decision about anything that affects me, I should have the right to view the source.

Just like an American Citizen shouldn't have to worry about secret laws, the code that implements the law shouldn't be secret.