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If they give it away for free, that benefits a relatively few people who can make use of it. If they sell it, they can put that revenue back into their program
by bryondowd 12y ago
If they give it away for free, that benefits a relatively few people who can make use of it.
If they sell it, they can put that revenue back into their program in place of (or in addition to) more taxpayer money.
This lets them do more with less taxpayer money going forward, so it sounds like a win for the average Joe taxpayer. (In theory.)
- jonknee 12y ago> If they give it away for free, that benefits a relatively few people who can make use of it. If there are relatively few people who benefit the sales will also be meaningless. You'll also have a bunch of losses for things that didn't sell well, liability for when something goes wrong, etc etc. The government isn't a business, it should not try to be one.
- bryondowd 12y agoWell yeah, but there's a difference between "Let's list all this stuff we've already done for our own purposes and see if we can recoup a little cash" and acting like a business. As long as they aren't putting too much effort into sales, it probably works out to an easy net positive.
- quahada 12y agoThe main motivation of this sort of technology transfer program isn't the license revenue itself. That's insignificant when compared to their operating budget. The point of this program is to provide evidence that the research has commercial applications. With this evidence, they are able to go to Congress and show their research helps the economy, which is used as part of the justification of their research budget.