It would be nice if the Commission followed the example of the French government and deployed Matrix for secure communication. I don't know what the going rate is for a thorough security audit of a chat client, but carrying out such an audit would be another good way to spend EUR 5000 on securing free software.
For the benefit of the sibling comment that has been removed, let me say that I think there are some public goods which are best provided by the government because of the coordination problem of getting people to voluntarily pool their resources (although crowdfunding solutions do make that option more viable).
In particular, something like a self-hostable secure messenger has important cybersecurity implications, so it makes sense that governments (and supranational bodies) would devote funds towards protecting citizens that way. For other pieces of software there may be less of a justification, but governments do sometimes (economically rationally) invest in supporting industries so that they grow and create jobs.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 19.9 ms ] threadIn particular, something like a self-hostable secure messenger has important cybersecurity implications, so it makes sense that governments (and supranational bodies) would devote funds towards protecting citizens that way. For other pieces of software there may be less of a justification, but governments do sometimes (economically rationally) invest in supporting industries so that they grow and create jobs.