I am not a total newbie in programming, but I have never programmed things in bitcoins. I am intersted in finding out more about programming bitcoin related things, and such open source robot would be great for me and all others that want to be developers.

Probably it is because they don't have control over it. I don't think that the government is happy to have people trading money that they can't control. It is just my opinion, probably they have a much beautiful excuse for making it ilegal, I don't know.

For sure! As it is not written in the law, trading bitcoins is exactly like buying gold from someone close to you. As it is not considered money.