If anything, the lesson to learn from the LiMux failure has nothing to do with technology or with project planning + execution, but with politics. If you extort millions from government as a for-profit business, most of which ends up as pure profit, there is an “emperor's new clothes” dynamic. It aligns the interests of government officials with yours in driving a narrative that there was good value generated for the taxpayer from that taxpayer money you got. Also: You now have those millions in a war fund, which you can use as negotiation mass. (In the case of LiMux and Munich, Microsoft relocated their corporate HQ to Munich as a quid pro quo for the City of Munich abandoning the LiMux project, which directly benefitted the City of Munich because it now got to tax Microsoft in a way that it didn't previously get to do). … these kinds of strategies game theoretically dominate any kind of play that's possible through open source.

Planned to get a discount from MS at least