Well said. And I think there's more. In the Anglosphere and the USA in particular, government and state are often conflated, but they really are two different things. The former is the cockpit, the latter is the airplane.

Things are different in European cultures. In Latin languages, for example, the government is understood to be the body of politicians in control right now, whereas the state is a sort of expression of the people's will and therefore has much wider legitimacy. Two very different things. I believe it's similar in German.

I sometimes wonder if this semantic quirk has exacerbated the general skepticism of English-speakers towards collective action.

I don't think your edited title is that clarifying, and in fact, muddies the water by glossing over some key details. Chiefly, Congress doesn't fund the OTF, they fund the US Agency for Global Media, which in turn uses some of their money to fund the nonprofit OTF; the OTF then uses their money to "support open technologies and communities that increase free expression, circumvent censorship, and obstruct repressive surveillance as a way to promote human rights and open societies," per their 501(c)3 non-profit mission statement.

OTF has its own board, and they operate independently from the government, though their operations are tied in a roundabout way to how Congress decides to allocate funding.

That F-Droid got a piece of that pie is a good thing, especially in light of the current regime and how they're basically giving the middle finger to Congress.

Don't worry, it's libre software, we control it.

I want to share that My brain first interpretation from the title is that they are receiving money to do dirty things. And reasoning about it , Nothing to do with reality of course I didn't even read the article . End of message.

Thanks for this clarification. Certainly something to be aware of and pay attention to, but a little less instantly alarming than the OP title.