the author is referencing government actions that are being taken at a federal level, hence "big government"
I am not pro-big government but I won't rip on anyone else for being so, just saying that if the author wants to say "Open Source" is fueling this level of authority they should really back it up.
This is frontloaded with proclamations of "extremism" upon things the author disagrees with and doesn't give us any technical evidence that the foundations of open source are helping in some major way to perpetuate big government -- Isn't the US Government very keen about acquiring proprietary software? (obviously the party referenced in the brief subjective opener)
It's interesting how faced with ethical issues, people with vocal opinions about tech resort to coming up with some over-designed workaround that has no technical feasibility (this is my opinion of GDPR incidentally) instead of standing by the principles we should defend in the face of bad actors.
“contact me or my agent, tell us what you’re doing, and we’ll decide whether to grant you an additional licence for use”
I am not pro-big government but I won't rip on anyone else for being so, just saying that if the author wants to say "Open Source" is fueling this level of authority they should really back it up.