I wholeheartedly agree with this. But what actually makes this work is taxes.

If a government provides funds to grow a business, and that business makes more money, the government benefits from both corporate taxes and keeping that money in their country, thus going to individuals who also pay taxes, and spend money on material goods which means more taxes.

The challenge with FOSS and moneymaking, is it only works if there’s a profit center to come back via taxes. Sure, it’s public money, but government is also a business. And since OSI still doesnt have a tier to support license like SSPLv1, source available is the best companies can do in that kind of situation (think MongoDB and Redis, for instance).

So, to me, an admittedly N of 1:

• Provide public funds on requirement of an SSPLv1 style license
• If there is no business model for SSPLv1 (non-reseller), require FOSS release after a period of 5 years of exclusive use of code built with public funds