At first impressions, 'limiting' the choices for govts to choose only open source solutions may sound monopolistic.

However the benefits of going open source is the freedom the govt departments will receive in terms of future use, and this itself is quite a valuable right.

> Would it then fall upon the government to contract somebody to write the code that would bring PostgreSQL up to par with their existing Oracle installs?

If the goverments of the country/world will only use open source, we, taxpayers will now benefit from our contribution$ of our goverments directly.

Imagine the m/billions currently spent on licensing now to be diverted to fund Open Source projects to maintain and increase features for govermment departments.

All software houses contracted by the govt will have to release their source leading to (hopefully) better and more full featured software. Everybody wins!
Govt gets good software for good money, software engineers get paid at market rate, common people get to use the new software for free, and this cycle of benefits repeats itself.

What is the use of giving our country's/state's money to a philanthropist, when we can clearly see where our money is going, and enjoy the direct benefits?

yk.