there is software that my tax dollars have paid to produce that is not free to me to download and is not released under open source licenses.
https://gipsy-oasis.jpl.nasa.gov/index.php?page=software
this seems wrong to me
@sneak The US government gets really weird about things having to do with space.
I wrote a NASA patent once. The filing for it got me a little confused because you need to get anything space-related cleared with NASA first.
Fortunately, New Space is a Thing and there are other orgs that escape the atmosphere now.
@sneak I asked them about it. It was something about the kinetic energy of a rock outside our atmosphere being equivalent to the largest bomb we have dropped.