Money isn't diverted to open source - its spent on staffing (both in house and consultancies) needed to support the open source software. Hiring Deloitte or Ac

Money isn't diverted to open source - its spent on staffing (both in house and consultancies) needed to support the open source software. Hiring Deloitte or Accenture or another consultancy to provide the support for an open source piece of software (be it directly or "we need to have people with these skills") is still extracting money from the org and I can assure you that the consultancy isn't contributing back to FOSS. As it is, Microsoft is a known quantity with a support SLA that meets the necessary requirements both for hosting of data and for response time. The cost of Microsoft licenses and support is less than the cost of hiring additional staff or bringing in a consultancy. A budget item with a fixed number in it is much preferable for budgetary allocation than open ended numbers typically found from consultancies. The support of open source software is often more costly for the public sector than going with a big tech solution - even when including the cost of licensing. Until the cost of support for open source solutions comes down to where the proprietary options are, it is often not something that is considered. RedHat is an example of a company that is doing it right - offering the support that the public sector desires with a consistent budget line item. If you can stand up a PostgreSQL instance that is able to compete with the Oracle performance and support (e.g. backup restore failed - call support and have someone on the phone helping now) for less than the cost of the Oracle licensing you will have people beating down your door to sign up. Same thing with Microsoft. For the federal government to do this on their own is much more costly. It goes back to the consultancies to implement, migrate, and maintain. Trying to staff up to be competitive to be able to do it in house is also quite costly (note the pay difference between public sector and private and then multiply that difference as an ongoing expense by the number of employees needed). And so this returns back to the FOSS community to address the needs of the public sector and create the needed companies that are competitive to be able to provide that ongoing support. ChatGPT will not write an office.com competitor this decade... or next.