There was a push from the government itself to buy open source but not to require companies to publish or make their sources available. Not sure if this was wha

There was a push from the government itself to buy open source but not to require companies to publish or make their sources available. Not sure if this was what the OP was talking about. It was later undone because providing support for these alternatives sucked (open office and the like), people didn't want to use tools they had no experience with and corruption, as the big players could just bribe people to buy closed source software.