What would stop the people of/under "your" government from freeloading off the people of/under "my" government?
"So, if YOUR government uses Linux, but doesn't participate in Linux development, it's bad for everyone else?"
I'm not sure where you are going with this. I certainly never claimed that governments should not use open source software. By all means I hope (for argument sake let's call it The US) leverages Linux where practical.
What I disagree with is the premise that The US or their contractors owe pull requests or public repos to the peoples of the world just because the US taxpayer partly or fully funded a development project. Hate on me if you must but I believe that no US funded research results be they in software or any other IP are or should be automatically owed to the peoples of the earth.
"Most Linux users aren't contributing to Linux itself. And likely less than half are making any significant contribution to Open Source Software at all. It's still useful software, and I still appreciate everyone that does work on it."
Yes, I agree with your idea that most open source users are freeloading in the sense that they contribute far less than they use. That is part of my point.
We are not in a communist/socialist world where every community must pay at the point of a gun for things they don't choose to pay for. And if some government wants to force users of software they develop to contribute to funding, then there licensing should probably be something to reflect that. But then it wouldn't strictly be OSI/Open-Source.
"We are not in a communist/socialist world"
This is EXACTLY my point. We are (at least I am) not. My government does not owe me or anyone else (let alone a foreign government) open source access to it's IP. To think otherwise (as you appear to do) is to be the socialist.
I hate to break it to you, but open source IP is socialism. I hope that does not come as some sort of shock to you.
Again to be very clear I am a fan of open source projects. I use them, I contribute to them. However, I choose how and what I use and contribute. My government does not choose for me or worse mandate via some policy that I must.
If you feel that The US government should require you to open source your in-house CnC software to the people of the DPRK because The US gave you a business development grant of $10k then you sir are the communist, not I.
That aside, I do feel most of what is publicly funded via tax dollars taken by threat of force should be open. This includes data and software (other than expressly licensed, commercial off the shelf software). I'm not as hardline as some on this, but I do feel that way.
The Communist POV would be that all software, data and access be restricted and expressly owned by the government and not really the people.
Open-Source is socialism if the government is forcing people to pay for it... so long as its' a collective voluntary thing not enforced by the government it is in fact not communism/socialism but a part of marginalizing that software which is not a core business component.
The point I was making is the government shouldn't be choosing for me... however, given that the government does fund software development for its' own needs, that development should probably be open.
For the CnC example, I've stated in other threads that I don't feel commercial software should be required to be opened if it exists and is licensed via govt contract vs. developed for.
This argument though is not about the merits of open source software but about the use of public funds. "If my taxes helped pay for software, should result necessarily be public source code."
My opinion is absolutely not.
If my taxes as a citizen of country "A" paid for the development of some piece of software then I do not have the slightest reservation that the citizens of country "B" have no kind of moral, ethical, or legal right to it.
If the tax payers, government representatives, and authors agree and choose to release their results and products under some open source agreement then that is up to them.