Yeah, I think that was the point of the article. Laws for thee, but not for me.
Second, Copyrights and Patents aren’t necessarily applicable to the armed services.
I've not seen where they aren't. However given the above distinction, it wouldn't matter if they are applicable since it allows the government to disregard all copyright with impunity.
Third, did the company want more than a couple million for the rights?
No mention of what the company was paid or wanted. The couple of million referenced was how much was spent on lobbying in 2007 by the company that was selected by the USAF to get around Blueport protection of its code.
They are not. Anything produced by the government is by nature public domain. However, a contractor can write something and assign the copyright to the government.
That said, most software written for the government (not just written and then sold to) becomes the property of the government. That the government had the source for SAIC to copy says this might have been the case. In that case the government had its own software reverse-engineered.
I thought that omission was very interesting. The Air Force boys aren't stupid I don't think that they would have paid out a couple of million if they could have gotten it from the original company for a couple of hundred thousand.