Comment by nightpool
1 day ago
What government programs in the US are stably funding open-source developers? I think most government-funded open source projects are very gunshy about looking for new funding because of the Trump administration completely politicizing grants and funding. I would not want to have to sign an anti-BDS pledge to get my open source project funded, and I would imagine that goes for many people in the community. Also, what "dismissive comments" are you referring to? The only one I saw was "Government support won't work for OSS at scale — it's too globally decentralized". Which is a fair criticism—open source projects are incredibly globalized, and getting e.g. New York State to fund an open source project that has contributors from Ukraine, India and China is a headache I don't think anyone would want to try and go through. There's just no benefit to the state administrators to fund that kind of project—they want to support parochial, home-grown projects with local ties.
Exactly! A few more considerations on gov support of OSS: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47171562