I would gladly contribute free software to government the same moment I start getting free health care, education, housing, electricity, child care and other things. Until then, no thanks. I pay taxes, and that's enough of the contribution to the society from my side.
You should probably read what I wrote again. I didn't say the government should rely on hacker on their free time.
I said whoever they assign government contracts should have their code setup as open source. Naturally the government would still pay that company, but the code would be open source.
Would you say the same for cars. For example, whenever government pay for a new car fleet, car designs should become open source and be available to all other members of the society free of charge. See the point? Why should only software vendors and developers be expected to provide the outcome of their hard work as open source?
