True, regardless of the cost, it feels like money spent on open source software is more ethical and a better way to spend tax money. Why pay $15 million to Microsoft that will only benefit their shareholders, when spending the same amount of money on open source software would benefit everybody (the citizens as well).

This resonates with me as well. This money will increase attention and expectedly contributions to OSS, which will also be of benefit to other entities implementing the same model later on. That’s the way to go towards sovereignty in software.