I find a lot of things tending towards "governments should fund this". I agree in principal that, at least in this case, everyone should collectively fund this. I don't understand how diverging ability to tax (given gross, massive, uncontrolled tax avoidance) and increasing pressures to fund as society grows more complex (and just/fair/compassionate?) and we realize we have difficult, not-profit-solution-compatible problems are ever going to meet. What's the all-encompassing solution? Our problems are that we cannot continue into debt infinitely, we are struggling to implement basic global tax norms (real, true minimums), there will always be inter-country competition for capital, people will always hate being taxed, we cannot ignore problems indefinitely.
A couple of points. Govt's dont make what they fund, its nearly always outsourced including but not exclusively the decision making. You want Govt's to fund roads, a roads laying and maintenance is nearly always outsourced to a business.
On the point of this software, does open source software really matter when its still going to be run on a closed source cpu of sorts. Your network switches, are just highly optimised cpu's for the job of routing, which is still closed source. Even something like ARM on the RaspberryPi is closed source BLOB's.
At best, this is like arguing for legislation to made available online when previously it was only available from the parliamentary library's or some of limited and specific journal like the thegazette.co.uk for company related announcements.
However all my internet access comes from private businesses, so how would open source software be of benefit to me, when most people are still using a private provider. Even Broadcom provide most of the broadband cabinets here in the UK which is a private business last time I checked.
Has anyone else been feeling this way?