Great idea in theory, but as you fear I think this would quickly be bastardized into more private military-industrial complex funding.
I would expect a tax-funded OpenSSL to be developed mostly in secret, in cooperation with the NSA, to be extremely expensive to develop/maintain, and to most definitely have backdoors.
I would expect a tax-funded OpenSSL to be developed mostly in secret, in cooperation with the NSA, to be extremely expensive to develop/maintain, and to most definitely have backdoors.