Off-topic: The body text is almost unreadable in Chrome/Windows, with gaps in many of the characters. Note to self: avoid font family Calluna.
The GPS example he references is an interesting exception to the norm of public services in the US. GPS infrastructure is made freely available for personal and commercial use at public expense, ostensibly due to its value to the US military. Contrarily, Internet and energy infrastructure is privatized, along with most other basic services we depend on. The correlation between the government putting a bunch of position and time broadcasting satellites into orbit at public expense and maintaining open source repositories as a matter of course seems weak, however. GPS infrastructure has an obvious practical value to the public and few other parties could have undertaken the project; maintaining one more OSS Python/Django inter-office communication tool project at public expense might not make quite as much sense.
The GPS example he references is an interesting exception to the norm of public services in the US. GPS infrastructure is made freely available for personal and commercial use at public expense, ostensibly due to its value to the US military. Contrarily, Internet and energy infrastructure is privatized, along with most other basic services we depend on. The correlation between the government putting a bunch of position and time broadcasting satellites into orbit at public expense and maintaining open source repositories as a matter of course seems weak, however. GPS infrastructure has an obvious practical value to the public and few other parties could have undertaken the project; maintaining one more OSS Python/Django inter-office communication tool project at public expense might not make quite as much sense.