https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46263903

There's also a paywalled NY Times article.

There were a couple of small firms that wrote software for small fire departments, charged them $1000 a year. A hedge fund bought up all of them and jacked up the price.

This is typical enshittification behavior. Get a monopoly, then jack up prices or make things worse for captive customers.

It's also silly that they don't have the ability to fight back. A couple of the small fire departments should get together, hire a couple good programmers, and open source the software.