true, but at least the money will got for a (relatively) good cause for a change. CSIRO would use the money for further R&D in many many different fields, including sustainable energy and medicine. They've made some not-insignificant advances in those fields, I for one would like to see them kept well funded to continue to do so.

Not all of their departments do good work however. I happen to have the misfortune of knowing just how well (ie: badly) their mining division works. They cost their clients millions of dollars by presenting the good guy persona that CSIRO has (and deserves) and then not delivering because they get a case of ADD and start working on the wrong thing.

I'm not going to go into details (yeah yeah trolling unless you substantiate claims) because of where I work, but not all CSIRO's were created equal if you take my meaning.

"lock in" is fine, provided it does everything you could possibly want the device(s) to do.

If, however, all devices don't work well together, sure it'll suck. If they "just work", I don't really see an issue with it.