> In a way they’re like any other law book that collects together public opinions and statutes with explanatory text, which are definitely copyrightable. If th

> In a way they’re like any other law book that collects together public opinions and statutes with explanatory text, which are definitely copyrightable. If they're commissioned by Georgia, it would make more sense for them to be bound to explicit terms that require their work to go into the public domain. Shame on Georgia for not demanding/negotiating it that way upfront. IMO if their work becomes the text that legislators ultimately consult when considering new legislation, that deliberation should be public. If LexisNexis can't do it under those terms and no one else bids, Georgia should fund the work themselves. Though I think it would be really excellent for the federal government to fund commercial open source software projects to satisfy the needs of state and local governments. So many of them have such uniform operations that you could accomplish a great deal by optimizing for the majority case.