Consider maintenance costs over the following decades. If the software is owned by the vendor, they can ask the highest price they can get away with, and the c

Consider maintenance costs over the following decades. If the software is owned by the vendor, they can ask the highest price they can get away with, and the customer (government in this case) has no option but to pay it. Of course they also have the option of stopping maintenance, or switching to another solution, but those are very expensive alternatives. However, if the software is open source, or alternatively owned by the government, than they can ask for competitive bids for maintenance. The vendor can no longer ask huge sums for basic maintenance. The projected savings can even justify significantly higher costs at the development stage.