Just a sidenote: some publicly funded code is produced as a side-effect of the government funding scientific research. The government is buying the research, not the code, so it should not have oversight on the coding process except inasmuch as it impacts the research. This could require open sourcing, but there ought not be an expectation that the code is particularly bulletproof.

IMO we should have an organization to produce publicly funded code (boring infrastructure stuff not R&D), but it should be neither achieved by co-opting existing community projects nor cannibalizing research projects. It should be a new thing.

Making an analogy to physical infrastructure: it would be crazy if we relied on groups of hobbyists to build a bridge, or if we just grabbed a bridge directly out of somebody’s PhD in civil engineering. (I mean the analogy looks ridiculous because the situation is!)