I admire volunteer work, but I don't think we should focus too hard on paths forward that summarize to "the volunteers need to work harder". If we like what they're doing we show find ways to make it more likely to happen.
For instance, we could forbid taxpayer money from being spent on proprietary software and on hardware that is insufficiently respectful of its user, and we could require that 50% of the money not spent on the now forbidden software instead be spent on sponsorships of open source contributors whose work is likely to improve the quality of whatever open alternatives are relevant.
Getting Microsoft and Google out of education would be huge re: denormalizing the practice of accepting eulas and letting strangers host things you rely on without understanding how they're leveraging that position against your interests.
For instance, we could forbid taxpayer money from being spent on proprietary software and on hardware that is insufficiently respectful of its user, and we could require that 50% of the money not spent on the now forbidden software instead be spent on sponsorships of open source contributors whose work is likely to improve the quality of whatever open alternatives are relevant.
Getting Microsoft and Google out of education would be huge re: denormalizing the practice of accepting eulas and letting strangers host things you rely on without understanding how they're leveraging that position against your interests.
France and Germany are investing in open source (https://chipp.in/news/france-and-germany-launch-docs-an-open...), though perhaps not as aggressively as I've proposed. Let's join them.