There are many things one can say about the US, but they have once nice law, at least at the Federal level--anything that might be copyrightable, that is created with taxpayer funds, is automatically in the public domain. For example, this is why everybody gets to have free use of all that stunning imagery from NASA. It also applies to US-Government-developed software as well. I have often wondered why other governments do not follow the same rule. Here in NZ, as in the UK, there is this weird concept of “Crown copyright”, which means that we, as taxpayers, do not get the use of material developed with our own money, we have to pay for it yet again. The European branch of the Free Software Foundation is calling for software developed with European taxpayer money to be made freely available in the same way <https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170914/09163238207/free-software-foundation-europe-leads-call-taxpayer-funded-software-to-be-licensed-free-re-use.shtml>.