If it's paid for by the people, it should belong to the people.
Open-source meets this requirement, proprietary software doesn't.
Open-source meets this requirement, proprietary software doesn't.
But that is a much narrower statement.
Most software developed using government funds is not exclusively developed by government employees as part of their official duties. Most Government funding of software development goes to contractors, where that rule does not apply.
The no copyright only applies to the US, not necessarily outside. Outside the US it definitely can have a copyright.
There are also some weird exceptions for government employees, specifically for the u.s. postal service and for certain materials created by NIST.
So Freedom of Information Act request will work if they're already predisposed to release the software, it's no guarantee.
People of all the countries are not a problem, but governments that are in political opposition to the US can be. I could imagine them using the source code to target technological and social structures of the country. They could do it now as well, but with much more effort than cloning stuff from GitHub.