Their mistake was in not demanding a non-disclosure agreement with the government. And it *was* a mistake, since the government has long been known to *steal* software that was not protected.
The first thing to do when you design software is to copyright the heck out of it, *especially* “look and feel”. Any government agent or representative has to sign the EULA and non-disclosure before they can even look at the software.
The software itself has to be completely original, and with many unique keys and internal documentation to insure that it isn’t reverse engineered without identifiers.
If you really want to be paranoid, include an encrypted backdoor that can be used to deactivate the software. Another trick is to require the software to validate with the manufacturer online periodically, which, if it fails to do so, data files cannot be accessed.
It would be a major victory for any software developer to foul up a government agency that had pirated their software. Especially if they had to come hat in hand to get the problem fixed.
They should not have provided the ATF a copy at all. At least not until it was ready to ship. The design of such an application would be trivial. The concept has been around for a long time. All new federal employees use a similar tool when applying for employment. Essentially, it is just a validated form that saves to a printable .pdf file. The ATF is not interested in stealing the design. They are only interested in controlling the concept and ensuring that nobody screws up their method of delicensing FFLs. If a tool like this gets to market, it may eliminate clerical errors on forms and more importantly show that there is no justification for the ATF to develop its own tools. Any kind of congressional oversight would merely point out that everyone is already using Coloseum and there is no justifiable need for the ATF to expend money on developing a competing product. Gun sellers would say the same thing.
Another of their big problems with the software getting market share is that the ATF design would likely be web based. They would host it on a BATFE server and FFLs would login and then have buyers enter ther information. FFLs would then print their 4473s and keep them on file as required by law. The ATF would however have them all saved off to the server and dumped into a federal registration database. They would also be able to run computer programs to validate the data far better than could be done by hand in the field. They would make the validation weak when buyers are entering data and then the validation would be brutally strong when their server validated the data prior to visiting an FFL. The software would ensure more failed audits. It would also allow the ATF to track all new purchases, datamine all of the new forms for trends, see what kind of dangerous person has bought more than 10 guns this year, etc.