I'd sign up for tenders, but they all seem to require a company with "1 million EUR revenue in public sector <whatever> projects" and 5 people with various roles, degrees and X years of experience in <whatever>.

I'm just a freelancer with FLOSS experience and some commercial experience, and so are plenty other FLOSS contributors. Nobody's going to create a company and hire staff just to have a chance at getting selected in the one tender a year that allows outsiders in.

The idea might be that only companies which have already proven themselves elsewhere can enter, but 1) then why the "public sector work revenue" requirement? And 2) that's not going to work for industries where government interest is much larger than private interest, like FLOSS.

But I suppose governments prefer the certainty that Accenture or local equivalents bring - a price an order of magnitude too high for a mediocre result and a 25% chance that the project will be fucked up and shelved, over the uncertainty of a small startup, who could either deliver something great, or overexert themselves and not finish at all...