&gt;  his primary pitch is a reduction of costs<p>I understood it the other way around: the bureaucracy was willing to pay the bill for the closed source options, thinking a large maintenance fee meant fast support. The author, on the other hand, wanted a system that would be more agile, with faster updates, easier maintenance and standards:<p>&quot;it was horribly inefficient, a maintenance nightmare, not user friendly, and agility was measured in decades.<p>Our job was to take that mess and fix it. The idea was to build a standard hardware and software platform [...].&quot;<p>So, as I understand it, easier work for him and his team and indirectly lowering the barrier of entry for future vendors, allowing more competition or a way to fix things themselves. Pretty much the true benefits of open source if you ask me.