There are some things the IRS shouldn't release like their fraud detection or anything related to deciding who should get audited. Releasing that risks big bad actors working around the limitations of whatever algorithms it contains.
> There are some things the IRS shouldn't release like their fraud detection or anything related to deciding who should get audited
That's perhaps a good reason for that part of the software to not be published and/or FOIA disclosable, but that's orthogonal to how it is licensed. If it's an original government work now it would be public domain (which is more open than open source), but still potentially confidential and nondisclosable.
While I appreciate the distinction between license and classification, does it really matter if a piece of software is "in the public domain" if its very existence and content is classified and non-disclosable? It may as well not exist as far as open-source or public domain is concerned.
> While I appreciate the distinction between license and classification, does it really matter if a piece of software is "in the public domain" if its very existence and content is classified and non-disclosable?
If the entire work is, less so than if it was disclosable (although there are laws governing the government use of copyright protected work, and arguably there is a benefit to the public interest if the vendor has provided and open source license even if the work is not publicly disclosable.)
But practically, classification and, perhaps even moreso, the other exceptions to FOIA would often apply to limited portions of software systems rather than whole systems, as is often the case with other materials covered by FOIA.
