I tried doing this when I worked in the UK government. It is a surprisingly hard problem. Firstly, lots of OSS doesn't have a well defined owner. So who gets t

I tried doing this when I worked in the UK government. It is a surprisingly hard problem. Firstly, lots of OSS doesn't have a well defined owner. So who gets the money? Do they actually want to take money from the "big bad state"? Is there a mechanism to pay them? If so, which budget does it come from? Government spending is heavily scrutinised. Why are we spending money on something that is "free"? What due diligence has been done? Should it be a competitive tender? It was sometimes possible to get round this. Pay for someone to speak at an internal event, buy a support package, pay for training etc. Governments (and most large orgs) just aren't set up to pay ad hoc amounts to non-suppliers, who aren't charging money.