Kitware's Contribution to the OSTP RFI On Publically Funded Data: the “Open Source Way”

Here I want to applaud the response from Kitware, a company I know remotely (though have never visited). I work closely with Marcus Hanwell, who has developed Avogadro, an Open Source molecular editor (picture at the end of this mail).

The point here is that Kitware is dedicated to making a successful profitable commercial business out of “Open Source”. They make their software Free/Openly available (Avogadro is. GNU GPL.). Their flagship is VTK, a graphics toolkit. Their business model is to create added value on top of F/OSS (e.g. by services, consultancy, privately contracted software, etc.)...