I can speak for IT systems cuz I am in this line. Usually when
my company ask for vendor for systems, inside our request, we
specifically request for the source code that came along. The
strategy is simple. We do not intend to be held ransom by that
vendor ONLY. If possible we can use that set of source code and
refer to another vendor for future upgrades etc.
The best if your own local sporeans can do the enhancement and
upgrades but the problem is there are only that many good sporean
programmer ard to look and understand the source code to do further
enhancement.
So the customer have to depend on and keep on feeding the vendor
money to sustain your own business operation. This is a very bad
model as you are being held ransom. However to break from this
model, can you recruit competent programmers in-house to do the
job? This is crucial to breaking the ransom model.
Most sporeans can do the hardware task for replacing etc ... but
when delving deep into the source code for software or even
hardware circuitry within the hardware component, we find not so
many takers. So who to blame?
Blame DSTA, DSO cuz they absorb too many good sporean R&D
engineers into their institution leaving so little outside to
service MRT and watever company lines 
Sporeans muz understand high level view is NOT enuff... if need to
be muz go deep down into the innards to fully understand and
control the system so as not to be held ransom by vendor and FT and
of cuz endless demand of so called maintenance and upgrade
costing.
