The American Prospect has an interesting discussion going on about government regulation and open source.

Eric Raymond, Lawrence Lessig and various other clever chaps are taking part. This is somewhat related to the essay by Lawrence Lessig I mentioned in an earlier entry.

The discussion prompted an excellent comment (which I agree with) on Slashdot, about the relative value of different kinds of software licensing, both for the users and the developers. Lots of recommended reading!