I am convinced, that software projects funded by public money, should make their code free to use and publicly available by default. I understand that people do not like the idea in the beginning, due to reasons such as “then anyone can copy the code and just use it, but it is funded by us people”. or “does this not reveal security flaws?".

I do not see the problem with the first point. If a public already funded the code once, why should it not be available for others to use? And maybe even improve it? Also, others could save money by reusing the code.

Also, lots of people assume, that if you hide code, that this improves security. But they could not be more wrong. in 1988, Morrie Gasser already pointed out in his paper “Building a secure computer system”, that “Revealing the internals of a system does not mean revealing ways to penetrate the system”. And also that “disclosing the design of a system’s security mechanisms can actually improve security because it subjects the system to scrutiny by a much larger audience.” This is even more true nowadays, as everyone who is interested, can study GitHub repositories.

Luckily, there is an initiative, Public Money, Public Code, that promotes this idea. And, they have an excellent expert brochure.