[pascalmahe]

> his primary pitch is a reduction of costs

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:

"it was horribly inefficient, a maintenance nightmare, not user friendly, and agility was measured in decades.

Our job was to take that mess and fix it. The idea was to build a standard hardware and software platform [...]."

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.