I don't think digital public goods are economically that different from physical public goods. Expecting private companies to fund the (micro)infrastructure th

I don't think digital public goods are economically that different from physical public goods. Expecting private companies to fund the (micro)infrastructure that enables their business has never been a solution. It's a libertarian pipe-dream, leading to a spaghetti of "toll roads" and service outages. The obvious, time-proven solution is to fund this infrastructure through an accountable, transparent, public institution. There should be a central source of truth where you can check if X project is being publicly funded, at least within a particular jurisdiction. Grants would be simple: $X over Y years for "maintenance and general development", then reevaluate after Y years. If the federal government won't do it (although they already literally do this for government software projects...), then at least a forward-looking state could get things started. "libfoobar is officially a Texas Digital Public Good..." But leaving this up to the good-will of private, profit-seeking companies will simply never work in the long-run. Cost-cutters will inevitably come and ruin it, with no recourse for the maintainers. They will be the first to be "laid off".