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Linux in Munich Followup
Rican writes "Wired has a story that details some of the difficulties that Project LiMux seems to be experiencing in Munich. Including financial and technical issues. On the positive side it looks like despite these setbacks they are continuing with the project and have a positive attitude about its completion. Let's keep our fingers crossed and do what we can to support this monumental effort that will benefit the whole Open Source Community."
Munich Council Press Statement (translated)
Stefan Hauf
Presseamt Muenchen
http://www.muenchen.de
Munich goes with Open Source Software
The city of Munich will use Linux as the operating system for their 14,000 PC clients as well as open source software for their office applications.
With the votes of SPD, Alliance 90/Die Gruenen/Pink list, FDP, OEDP, REP and Party of Democratic Socialism, the town assembly followed Mayor Christian Ude's proposal.
An appraisal given by the city in order to evaluate the pro and cons of a conversion of the present urban standard "Windows NT/Microsoft Office" alternatively on "Windows XP/Microsoft Office" or "Linux/Open Office" comes to the conclusion that there is a clear strategic-qualitative projection/lead for the open source solution.
Mayor Ude: "With this trend-setting decision Munich secures itself as the first major city to have a major portion of its IT infrastructure be supplier-independent and sets also a clear indication of more competition in the software market. The prehistory of this decision already showed that a competitive situation helps the formation of prices pretty well. "
Regarding the decision, mayor Ude pointed out that this is not a decision for a specific IT partner, but a strategic positioning based on a noncommittal market evaluation.
Until spring 2004, a detailed concept of implementation and migration will be developed. Based on the results of this evaluation, the city council will decide how the migration to Linux will take place.
IBM Germany Statement
May 28th 2003
The city council of Munich today made a key decision to deploy the open source operating system Linux instead of alternative operating systems. This initiative will see Germany's third largest city migrate 14,000 desktop and notebook computers to Linux. Their objective is to deploy information technology that stimulates more commercial and technological flexibility at a lower cost to the public sector. Although the council has not made a decision on its choice of vendor, Linux distributor SuSE AG and IBM Germany will be participating in the resulting contract bid.
Walter Raizner, Country General Manager IBM Germany: "In the public sector in Germany we have seen a variety of new implementations of open standards-based software such as Linux. And worldwide, more than 75 IBM government customers - including agencies in France, Spain, UK, Australia, Mexico, the United States and Japan - have now embraced open computing and Linux to save costs, consolidate workloads, increase efficiency and enact e-government transformation. With Munich's decision, one thing is clear - it's open season for open computing. Linux represents freedom and flexibility. This is essential in e-government - they need more flexibility to serve their constituencies better and faster, and freedom of choice to do it at less cost to the public. Munich is leading the way."
Massive by Design
they went for lower total cost of ownership, and superior strategic position, not lower initial cost.
$ strings FTP.EXE | grep Copyright
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
Wow, deja vu. Just as good as the last time this response was used. If you're going to copy something, at least make sure you change it around just a little bit. Outright copying of comments is just lame at best.
sigs are like a box of chocolates, they all suck remove the underscores to email me
Linux on the desktop is ready...the only thing holding it back is the inertia of windows users. Linux is at least as good technically on the desktop as Win 98/2000 in many areas much better [just the OS/DE mind you] Sure apps are missing, but they will come. The biggest problem are those pesky "must have" windows drivers or software. If you can convert an office to 100% OO.org [or another] you'd be just fine! My biggest problem getting a tryout of OO.org [in prep for Linux!] was those pesky USERS who simply refused to learn something new...and refused to try! I wouldn't deny growing pains...but if office workers were factory workers they'd all be out of work...for holding up progress!!!