Details of Linux-in-Munich Deal Revealed

An anonymous reader writes "USA Today is running a piece about the lengths which Microsoft went to in order not to lose the government of Munich's account to a Linux-based proposal from SuSE. Interesting to see how these types of contracts are structured, and just what Microsoft is willing to give up to prevent losing to Linux."

Comments

Some background information

[fxj]

The decision was based on a study made by a consulting firm in which the upgrade solution to winxp was cheaper than a pure linux solution on the time base of 5 years ! In the longer run the study claims that linux is cheaper than m$. also a solution with vmware was compared which was the cheapest of all ! The study claimed that for the pure linux solution they would have to buy a lot of new peripherials (card readers, printer etc) which makes the linux solution more expensive. a big problem for the winxp solution was that they would have to buy a lot of new hardware (new processors, more ram) which they wouldnt have to using linux. a short version of the study is available online:
http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/anw-2 7.06.03-0 03/
(sorry in german, use the fish)
the study is here:
http://www.muenchen.de/aktuell/clientstudie _kurz.p df

Re:Linux used in political campaign

[Holger Blasum]

IIRC political discourse (be it on slashdot or in an election) was meant to be about things that matter?
This comprises technology and its economic/social
implications.

Moreover, Lochner-Fischer (the candidate who had
printed the poster) actually has been a C application
programmer, so she understands the issue and her
stance in this is credible (I also saw her personally).

For bipartisan balance:
Former Fortran programmer posing with Jon Maddog Hall, also a good thing.