I think one easy mistake to make is thinking about this as an investment in software as a technical artefact. Which is more valuable for deterring war: A. An $

I think one easy mistake to make is thinking about this as an investment in software as a technical artefact. Which is more valuable for deterring war: A. An $80 million fighter jet with dysfunctional communication among its maintenance, logistics, and air combat teams. B. An organisation which can resiliently perform effective aerial interdiction and communicate the resulting intelligence clearly and swiftly. B, right? So too with peaceful investments. Governments should invest in teams with the capability to: 1. Understand the needs of the public, prioritised through some healthy democratic-representative process. 2. Write and refactor high-quality software as that nourishes the public good. 3. Empower members of the public to educate themselves on how to contribute to this public commons. Open-Source code itself? Eh, writing code is fun. When you take care of the team, the team takes care of the code.