I can't think of a more inefficient way of paying for OSS than giving more money to congress to have them divy it up between various pork barrel/military spending and hoping it eventually finds it's way into a competent programmer's hands.

Maybe just giving random people money in hopes one of them could become an OSS programmer, but even then, debatable.

I think it makes a lot more sense to have the companies just hire people to work on OSS more often.