[jdvh]

Certainly not. I don't believe progress is always good. But subsidies should be reserved for ambitious projects that push the state of the art forward. For those projects that realistically will not get funded commercially. CERN, for instance.

[panarky]

Building this allows them to reduce the subsidy that is perpetual software license fees.

[jdvh]

In exchange for perpetual development and maintenance costs. Total cost of ownership doesn't go down by rolling your own in-house.

[rglullis]

How is that a subsidy?

They are putting their resources into the development of a product that can be universally shared and used. There is no favored party.

Also, I completely disagree with the "ambitious projects". I actually would favor the government let all the risky ventures to private enterprises and focused only on tried-and-true developments and make them universally available to its citizens.