> Government entities aren't any good at building almost anything, but that's why they contract work out to private companies. I wouldn't expect EU government employees to work directly on FF, but rather for it to be contracted out to some EU company or companies.
I skimmed over the issue here: my more precise point is that government entities generally aren't good at building things when they outsource the actual building, either.
(Some people even go so far as claiming that outsourced government projects are worse than in-house ones.)
> The reason for forking rather than throwing money at Mozilla is that Mozilla doesn't seem to be doing a great job of managing themselves.
That might be true. Or perhaps they just have different priorities, and the EU can specifically pay them to do some work on EU priorities?
> Also, Mozilla is an American company; the EU would naturally want to give money to an EU company that hires EU citizens to do such high-value, high-paid work, not send that money to the US.
That's, alas, true from a political point of view. But not from a macroeconomic economic point of view, or just getting bang-for-your-buck.
> Plus, they can get a lot more software talent for their Euro in the EU (esp. eastern EU) than in America.
Mozilla can already hire from anywhere, too, can't they?
In any case, I already mentioned in my comment that the EU can pay someone other than Mozilla. The point I wanted to make is that the EU should not fork Firefox, but rather try to get their favourite contributions upstreamed, if possible.
In any case, I still think it would be a waste of taxpayer money for the EU to pick winners (ie award the project to someone). Instead they should focus on streamlining bureaucracies and regulation etc so that private entities (companies, or foundations or otherwise) that provide what people want (software or otherwise) can flourish in the EU.