Amortisation, anyone?
Anytime you buy some equipment, you should ask yourself when it will become worthless (at least for accounting purposes). To a first approximation, that happens with the expiry of either the hardware, the software or the vendor. It sounds like the hardware is still going strong in these cases (or is readily replaceable in the case of desktop PC systems) and so your main worries are software and vendor.
Someone selling you kit and agreeing to share the design and all source code, with an agreement that says you can use that information either if the vendor disappears or if you think the vendor's support offering is too pricey, will immediately have an expected lifetime of N-times longer than the schmuck who sells a closed system. That makes it N-times cheaper than the (closed) competition.
If your bean counters are doing their job properly, that should mean that an organisation the size of the NHS basically need never get into this sort of situation again. Indeed, any use of a closed system should immediately raise suspicions of corruption and back-haners, since it is so vanishingly unlikely that the deal is being costed fairly.
Afterthought: A private sector organisation has to consider a fourth possibility, the expiry of itself. That might present a compelling argument for something that is cheaper this year and we'll worry about the costs next year. Countries tend not to go bankrupt, even when they run out of money, so they probably *shouldn't* be worrying about that fourth possibility.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
