We should talk less about public goods funding & more about open source funding

Vitalik Buterin argues that the term "public goods" has become too easily stretched, with commercial projects describing themselves as "building a public good", and that "open source" is a clearer alternative. He notes that central examples of digital public goods, such as academic blockchain and cryptographic research, documentation and tutorials, and open source software like Ethereum clients, are all open source. He adds that open-sourcing is itself a public good with diffuse benefits, and that open source has a well-agreed definition from the FSF and OSI. He also suggests that for physical goods, such as clean air and defense technology, open source is the most efficient route to global scale.