NIST, the National Institute of Standards and Technology publishes reference libraries of hundred of thousand of compounds. I would like to use these in my computer for GC data, however it looks like they have to be purchased from the instrument distributor, in my case Thermo. My question is more about politics, being NIST a U.S. Government agency I was under the impression that every work of a government employee is in public domain, therefore free. Why are these libraries in particular not free to download?
This is my opinion only, but many of these libraries especially those from NIST comes from collected research and contributed to NIST for the sole purpose of sharing identifications with others in government laboratories. These are used to collaborate between laboratories which are generally free to share with each other. Companies such as Thermo and Agilents are private profit making companies and therefore have paid licensing fees which I believe they are passing it on to you as their customers. I don't think the companies such as Thermo are making much profit for selling you the licensing fee for using the NIST libraries and operating software.
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