This seems to have been written by someone unfamiliar with real estate, local government, natural resources, or any other traditional line of business that depends heavily on GIS. I don't know what my county pays for ArcGIS but it's probably substantial, and I suspect there are multiple IT employees devoted to maintaining the system.

Replicate that across nearly every single political locality in the US, probably the world. The industry is huge.

Also, "long form twitter" is dumb.