"Emacs was supported financially by people working at the MIT AI Lab, which means that it was funded by Uncle Sam. It was not invented by Richard Stallman contrary to popular myth, although he did grab the sources and improved them and tried successfully to claim as much credit as he could. It’s real cost in market terms was effectively many thousands of tax dollars and it was paid for as such by Joe Schmoe."

This is an interesting bit of history. Is that a correct description of the history? How many other now "open source" projects began with that kind of initial taxpayer subsidy?