Which you pay for through services, not software licensing. With free software, we've just cut out a good chunk of the pork.
Therein lies the problem -- When the govt mandates (or develops) GPL / open source software, it's interfering in the commercial software business. It's taking the side of one group of corporations over another group.
IBM still has a very large proprietary software base. They were just smart enough to realize the potential for both profit and diversity of business model in OSS. Any company can do it.
There's no free lunch there. The software licensing costs are cut, but the administration/setup fees increase.
They [IBM] were just smart enough to realize the potential for both profit and diversity of business model in OSS.
IBM lobbying California to mandate open source software makes me laugh. I can only imagine IBM's reaction to the hypothetical situation where California requires all mainframe hardware purchases be from "open hardware" companies.