I used to work for an enterprise GIS vendor who generally contacts for Indian government departments. Primarily, we were trying to offer competition to ESRI for

I used to work for an enterprise GIS vendor who generally contacts for Indian government departments. Primarily, we were trying to offer competition to ESRI for bagging government contracts. Quite honestly, the ecosystem of products offered is really really bad. ESRI, the market leader by far, tries to cram their really clunky software with aggressive marketing. Most of the time, these Govt. departments just end up buying ESRI products that is of little everyday use to them. We beat them out several times by offering a product with far fewer features but much more customised to the needs of a specific department. Recently though, Indian government departments that use GIS extensively (and governments are among the biggest consumers of GIS products) are seeing a shift to using QGIS. Now they invite tenders just asking for custom GIS plugins to solve a specific issue they want. It gladdened my heart to walk in to a control room in one of these centers and see nearly every terminal running QGIS. Of course, this makes it tough for my company, but I felt quietly happy knowing that this was absolutely the right way to go. Kudos to whoever in government who's made these choices.