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Comment by jl6 | Hacker News Reader

It’s a reckless move to cut funding so abruptly, but taking a step back from the short-term chaos, it probably is an anomaly that this was government funded. All of private tech relies on it, and private tech is big enough to pay for it. I hope that the trillion dollar babies consider this an opportunity to pool together to form a foundation that funds this, and a bunch of other open source projects run by one random person in Nebraska.

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> it probably is an anomaly that this was government funded

Companies can definitely fund it. But to be fair the gov, including NIST, also relies on CVE.

Ah yes the old “well can’t concerned citizens band together, form a committee, collect revenue and fund things that are in the common interest” answer you hear from small government types that makes me think you lot don’t really understand what government actually is.

Considering the large number of government agencies that have sponsored the program, no, I don't think it was an anomaly: https://www.cve.org/About/History

The US government itself uses the database, so there is a strong national security interest in it not being in private hands.

> it probably is an anomaly that this was government funded. All of private tech relies on it, and private tech is big enough to pay for it.

I mean doesn't big tech and the people they give salary money to pay taxes? Ground transportation companies rely on public roads and but we fund it because having the infrastructure is an economic multiplier.

I'm not arguing in favor of funding the CVE program, I just don't think that's a good reason.

Opinions vary on what the purpose of government is, but if you take the view that the government's priorities should be providing services that are impossible, inefficient, or unethical to provide privately, then I don't see the CVE program making the cut, when the tech industry is collectively flush with resources and has every incentive to form an industry consortium to take it over.

A modern Open Group, perhaps?

ah yes, let private entities pay for it. then when there is a vulnerability with one of those entities' software, they can pay a bit more to bury it!

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