Gov-acquired software can be architected to separate open-source components from classified components. This enables reuse of commercial (open or closed) software with the economics and rapid iteration of larger markets. For open-source components, this enables public collaboration on COTS, with non-public collaboration on classified GO(v)TS components.
> The BRL-CAD source code repository is the oldest known public version-controlled codebase in the world that's still under active development, dating back to 1983-12-16 00:10:31 UTC.
It's practical for software vendors on platforms [1] with virtualization, which have been gradually increasing over the past decade, including Windows, ChromeOS and Android.
It doesn't help with doing any splitting (e.g. 20 years ago) but in current era where software is architected as micro-services and packaged for containers and VMs, software is more likely to be "born as reusable component".
