Is them cooperating on open source software a realistic outcome?
Or will there be many small, unmaintainable, slightly different, open projects?
Why are they not already collaborating on closed source software?
Looking at the mess of customizations asked for software by companies doing the same thing, I can't imagine it would be different for counties/municipalities.
(edit: Please don't misunderstand, I am not against publicly funded open source, I am just not sure if all the arguments for it hold up that well)
They are currently using closed sourced software, because it was sold to them, on god knows what terms, and how many people paid off. As with many other things in life, it's not about the thing itself, but about the people involved.
If they collaborated today that would mean a lot of active coordination required.
And only municipalities in the collaboration can benefit. If they just open sourced what they have this collaboration could grow more organically.
Of course large scale software collaboration isn't impossible without open source. But my impression is that it greatly simplifies it.
Besides, if the software is open source, other non public actors can also benefit from it.
Looking at the mess of customizations asked for software by companies doing the same thing, I can't imagine it would be different for counties/municipalities.
(edit: Please don't misunderstand, I am not against publicly funded open source, I am just not sure if all the arguments for it hold up that well)