[OutOfHere]

> Obviously any attempt, perceived or real, to write the requirements against an existing product will result in lawsuits.

The obvious solution here is for the town to give the open source software an initial try on their own, then include it in the requirements as a preexisting use. In any case, the bid and contract then is not for a new product but for integration instead.

[MadnessASAP]

A jurisdiction can't just do something, that's the whole problem. The moment a dollar needs to be spent, a resource committed, whatever. It becomes a procurement problem.

Further to that there's nothing stopping a supplier from either claiming integration with another product is unfair and prejudices the competition or simply importing the data into their proprietary system and leaving the FOSS solution as some vestigial object hanging on the side.

I'm not joking when I say the system is absolutely beyond fucked with no obvious solutions. Most of it is so mundane and boring you won't ever here about it but ask any public service employee about their experiences in trying to get absolutely anything, from pens to planes to platforms the stories are all the same and many have tragic comedies of when the whole thing went wrong.

[OutOfHere]

Jurisdictions do have their own software staff too whose hands are not tied. They're free to get something started with an open source project. I don't see anything being financially procured at this stage, so the procurement problem doesn't apply.

The contractor can claim what they want, but the legal case is strongly already in favor of the jurisdiction if something is already bootstrapped in-house using open source.