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this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2023
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Technology
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I am exactly doubting your suggestion of tax paid donations. I don't think this will happen, unless we actually come together and try to actually enforce this on the political level in various countries.
After all, open source software is an essential and critical foundation since many decades - but I'm not sure, whether there is any government that has made a pledge to donate a certain amount of money per year into the development and funding of such general purpose software. (Maybe I'm wrong though.)
Before the fediverse can get any public funding, we need to make some political efforts. the UN is the largest such institution - and it took all the fiasco with the 2 world war to get many countries pledge to donate to it every year...
Tor (The Onion Router) was invented by a United States Naval Intelligence Unit. They released the source code as open source and handed control over to the EFF but several US Government agencies continued to provide substantial funding (especially the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor Affairs). As far as I know they continue to fund it.
There are definitely examples of Governments funding open source software, especially things that are as valuable as a social network.
I meant private donations, which are already happening.
I think tax revenue would be spent on government employees looking over content in search of evidence of crimes/etc, which I'm sure is also already happening. I hope they don't just look - they should be reporting whatever they find.