That's one of the worst things about the government. They base almost every decision on what's the absolute cheapest, and free software is as cheap as you can possibly go. I for one know I won't feel any safer next time I'm flying!
Fortunately, 'cheap' != 'low cost'.
Knowing what I do about OpenSource platforms, I will feel no less safe.
One of the worst things about government is that it rarely keeps itself to the standard of what's cheapest that will accomplish the mission. They just saved $15 million of my tax dollars, so I'm happy.
Oh, I forgot, you prefer subsidies to IT companies in the form of the government always paying more than it needs to, and you don't mind that the taxpayers get stuck with the bill.
I for one know I won't feel any safer next time I'm flying!
Just be glad they didn't go with Microsoft. There was a Microsoft system in air traffic control that required regular restarts to keep running. They were normally scheduled every 30 days to avoid the bug (which blew every 49.7 days), but someone forgot and the machine restarted itself right in the middle of operations, threatening air traffic. It was a problem with using Microsoft's RPC and GetTickCount(). They didn't have that problem when it was running on UNIX.