Devil’s advocate here:
Private enterprise buys proprietary closed source software, should the government really be unable to do so? It would mean skills are less likely to be transferable (for example private: Excel, or rarely Numbers, government: well none of the open source spreadsheets actually do the full role of what Excel does, but some are pretty close, I guess one of those, plus some extra funding to get pivot tables and such; now get 6 years experience in private or government pushing numbers and try to transfer out…).
I personally like Open Source software, but that doesn’t mean there is always a profit incentive to write it. So if the government isn’t allowed to buy the stuff, they will have to contract out for someone to write it just for them (or have that talent in-house). For things that are sufficiently different from all existing solutions this can be cost effective, but for things that more or less exist (say written for another government, or for large enterprises) it will cost a lot more to write a new one from scratch.
I mean I personally like writing code, but more the kind that controls a laser cutter then evaluates criminal records and predicts recidivism. So if nobody is going to pay me, I’m controlling the laser. If they are going to pay me, I would rather work on something I can sell more then once (say, to each of 50 states) then to something only one state will buy, and then they will give to all the other states. It’s not just greed here, I do have a mortgage to pay for, and food to put on the table. Plus I need to keep buying wood for the laser cutter…
