I worked for a company that did state gov contracts. We probably built legislative publishing stuff for more US states than any other company in recent years.

I worked for a company that did state gov contracts. We probably built legislative publishing stuff for more US states than any other company in recent years. We never ever locked anyone in, not even little bit. We bult everything on open standards (odt and later docx), django etc. A typical cycle was they would hire us to do joint development for 1-2 years, then a juicy support contract for another 1-2 years, then they gave us the boot. My feeling after doing that many times is there's no money in it really. Government clients are impossible to work with. They have utterly perverse incentives that defy any rational mind and they don't pay if they can get away with it.