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Munich Struggling with Linux Transition?
rune2 writes "The Toronto Star has an article up that mentions that Steve Ballmer is gloating about how the Munich transition to Linux and Open Source software isn't going too well." Even if the transition is going poorly, what about when Munich is finally set? Funny how there's no mention of all the future costs of licenses they've already saved themselves from, yet there's a nice plug for the next version of Windows. Last time I checked, Windows' upgrades from one version to the next were not free by any definition.
At least they didn't waste too much money buying software.
They spend quite a while discussing the problems Windows has with security, including viruses... how is that a nice plug?
The article seems pretty balanced to me, although it does gloss over one or two points (Munich hadn't already 'made up their mind' when Microsoft made a cheaper offer).
Sounds like a good opportunity to look into why and exactly what isn't going too well, so it can be fixed.
For those a little bit envolved in this transition, that comes as no surprise.
E.g. some departments are already running AD and have been issued permissions to run this setup for 2 or 3 more years.
Other factors are lots of home-grown VB-apps that need to be ported or converted into Webapps, with the added complexity that there's no budget and virtually no knowledge about how to do that...
Nevertheless, the city will not go back (I hope), because the decision *does* make sense. Just not for Steve Balmer.
But that should come as no surprise, either.
Rainer
Windows 2000 - from the guys who brought us edlin
I dunno, if I'm to believe all those ads I see here on slashdot, the TCO for windows is less than linux. Because, you know, 7-11 is a company I'd look to for my technology purchase information.
Work sucked, until it became unemployment, when it became slightly more tolerable. -Tet
Ballmer said security "occupies a lot of my (mental) bandwidth" these days, and while much still needs to be done to satisfy customers, Microsoft is making "incredible progress" with its 2-year-old Trustworthy Computing strategy.
That's probably the reason why my Windows machine at work has downloaded the same security update about ten times in the last two weeks. Nice to watch progress in the making...
-- Power corrupts, but PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.
...if Linux really is to blame (and I haven't seen any specifics on what problems they are having), then they can fix them themselves. If similar problems occured with Windows, then you would just have to beg Microsoft to fix them for you.
Funny how there's no mention of all the future costs of licenses they've
already saved themselves from, yet there's a nice plug for the next version of Windows. Last time I checked, Windows' upgrades from one version to the next were not free by any definition.
True, those costs are saved and they are quite substantial. The problems are getting everything to work with Linux when it was not designed to from the beginning. Now that is another substantial cost that stands out because it was not a cost anybody was dealing with before.
These problems are to be expected and certaily should not be a surprise to anybody with a clue. After everything is up and running THEN the savigs will be apparent and the Linux folks will laugh best.
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
So Ballmer is saying "It's more expensive". I'm pretty sure it was supposed to be more expensive - MS were the cheaper (initial cost) of the two solutions for Munich, in fact the article more or less says this.
So what exactly is this article, apart from a chance for MS to spin the loss of some major business into more fear, uncertainty and doubt ?
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
For a city the size of munich its nice to see them trying to use linux on such a massive scale, but any kind of technological roll out is going to have unexpected cost. However,as more people do these roll outs, the costs will come down -- or rather be gauged more accurately. We should all be thanmkful that Munich is willing to ungergoing this projects, as it will help the rest of us understand linux deployment on a largetr scale. Also on a personal side note: this is really to be expected seeing how they are using SuSE. SuSE isnt a terrible distro, but since we can all thank suse for being rpm based (yes i know it can support yum and maybe deb).
There are quite a few LUGs in Germany. I think it would be great press for one of them to assemble a team to assist their Government with the implementation of GNU/Linux.
"They're saying it's more expensive," Ballmer told the Star yesterday
So we're going to base this entire article on HEARSAY?
Microsoft's Ballmer says this and says that in the article. What does MUNICH have to say about all this???
PS: my experience has shown that Linux is the cheapest, most secure, and most reliable system to run. #2 would be OS X with Windows boxes coming in a very distant third. All costs absorbed in the switching happened in the first year (higher hardware & training perhaps) -- but within two years it was paying for itself in the lack of Microsoft tax alone...
They didn't say it was more expensive than Windows-- they said that it was more expensive than keeping what they had (i.e. having Windows and never upgrading/maintaining it) and more expensive than they anticipated. And I don't know if the Munich government works the same as city governments around here, but it seems to be traditional to severely lowball the costs of projects, just to get them rolling. Later, no one wants to kill a 'city improvement' plan, so everyone grudingly agrees to more funding.
====
Crudely Drawn Games
I'm surprised that a migration from Windows to somethign else would be difficult. Certainly not so difficult that it would cost more than Microsoft discounting the upgrade (which would not require any migration at all) down near zero.
There are costs leaving Windows, no doubt. From format lock in, all the way to the staggering stupidity and fear it fosters in it's users, Windows is all about keeping you using Windows.
..of those problems are because of they were using ms in the first place?
and how many of them would have existed when trying to move to a newer microsoft platform, and how many of them transition problems would have been significantly bigger if they had later decided to jump off the ms boat(after this round of upgrades and new lock in's from changing fileformats)?
-
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Sounds like another good reason to switch to Linux from where I am sitting :-)
They're no longer struggling with Windows, like 99% of the world's organisations.
And they'll be pissing themselves laughing next time a big virus hits.
That was classic intercourse!
Yes, but has Steve Ballmer been on Married with children?
I think not!
So, let me get this straight.
A Toronoto newspaper says that Steve Balmer says that Munich is having trouble switching to Linux. Boy, that's great investigative journalism there.
Answer that one for me, Mr. Ballmer.
They aren't locked into your prescribed update path, at your prescribed price, with your prescribed software... If Microsoft says "like it or lump it," you have no choice, and no freedom.
Yes, linux can theoretically be "free" (as in beer), but everything has update and maintenance costs (even if only in manpower costs)... everything... including windows and linux.
Even if it costs a bit more up front... how much are they going to save in the long run? And how much is it worth to be free to choose another vendor? Another tech support company? Another code monkey to maintain their systems?
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Well, duh. That's why Microsoft has a monopoly, right? Ballmer likes to bitch and whine about how it was a "political decision" and how such things are somehow dirty and rare, but he seems to have missed the fact that every decision is political. There's no such thing as a pure business decision.
No matter how many TCO studies you do, no matter how many reports are written by an IT dept doing an evaluation, the final decision is going to be made based on how comfortable somebody is with an idea. Going with Microsoft is safe, it's easy, because everybody else does it. That's a political decision. It's the old "nobody got fired for buying IBM" thing.
The problem with Ballmer is that he sees what he wants to see. Somehow he has to reconcile his beliefs (that Microsoft is better) with reality (people are chomping at the bit to leave them). He does this by saying:
There's another thing. Does anybody else have questions about the competency of the Munich guys to be doing such a migration? Why are they doing a crash switch, which is bound to end in tears? Why are there persistant rumours of them using VMware rather than bringing Wine up to speed on their products (which I'd guess works out cheaper in the long run and certainly provides a better desktop experience).
Finally, is it just me or does Ballmer look really evil in that photo?
Where is the story from Munich on this?
I would have liked to hear their side on this. Unless I just glazed right over it talking about other groups moving to Open Source and their woes or reasons that sounded like they shouldn't count.
Chalk one up for Journalistic Integrity, Sheesh. You don't have to be Anti or Pro anything to see the favoritism in that article. Sickeningly amatuerish. At least news outlets like CNN are better at being subtle with their agenda.
Something intelligent here.
Steve Ballmer, chief executive of Microsoft Corp., appears to take delight in the troubles that Munich is having as it switches 14,000 city computers from Windows to a rival Linux operating system.
Don't forget that 80% of the Linux computers in Munich run Windows on VMWare. But they don't mention that in the article, of course, which is intentionally written to make Linux look bad.
Isn't it great how ALL of the quotes in this article are from Ballmer? Every single one? I mean, gee, they spend a whole half a paragraph on paraphrasing "news reports out of Germany", but then let Ballmer go on for paragraphs and paragraphs without any attempt to analyze what he is saying. Real balanced journalism, that.
How many readers of the Toronto Star, do you think, are going to just glance at that article, see a quote from [someone] saying "All of a sudden it's more expensive now to use the Linux solution than the Windows solution," (with respect, in the article, to... well, they don't say what that quote refers to or what its context was, just that he said it at an expo) after a few paragraphs of talking about unexpected cost increases in the Munich city government, and walk away with the interpretation "It has been more expensive for the Munich city government to use Linux than it would have been to use Windows."
Linux is the better option. It is cheaper, just not in balmers (thats a currency). When I built my system, I had the choice of Windows (179) or Linux (40 for boxed set), natrualy, I chose Linux, I got all my hardware detected, all the software I needed and of course, all the games I played (some with wine).
Ballmer maybe laughing now, but as more and more organizations switch, it wont be long before Linux DOES cut into Microsoft's profits, and we will see who has the last laugh.
If you havn't tried Linux before, then
Legally get a free copy of Lindows! Lets see Microsoft beat that!
found here
That a company that's recently been hammered in the anti-trust area wouldn't
have a president gloating over how hard it is to change away from their
system to a more standards-compliant and open one. I guess they've given
up any sense of decorum a long time ago, but it's still a bit shocking.
Ballmer, recognizing that virus-infected home PCs pose a risk to business users, said the company is studying how consumers can get software patches automatically when flaws are detected in Microsoft software.
Attention IT managers: the PCs you're in charge of fixing may change their OS behavior at times of their choosing.
huh? what are you talking about?
i am bender insert girder
... it knows how to lie real good.
I suspect Munich is now getting better offers to help them convert to linux.
I love Linux and open source software in general but as much as we all hate Microsoft, Munchen made a bad decision. Maybe it was fueled by the disagreement about the war, who knows, but Linux is still in it's infancy. Microsoft will have fodder now to argue that Linux is not only not ready for desktop use but that it will never be ready. How will they make that point? Because they'll point to all of the Linux zealots who claim that Linux is already better than WinXP on the desktop. There is a lot of room for improvement when it comes to linux on the desktop. Patience is a virtue.
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
So to sum it up, they spend the same, but pay germans (so they get some money back), and educate the people. Not really a difficult choice.
What exactly makes Ballmer think that the Windows version wouldn't have gone over budget? You'd think that he'd seen enough consulting projects "go north" that he'd understand this is relatively normal, especially in a government job, with a tremendous number of people, and the result of a strongly competitive bidding process. I'm surprised that he can't see that - with his position, he should be able to understand what's going on here.
Oh, right - he's a fucking liar, from a nest of fucking liars. I forgot.
Quoth the Globe&Mail: "Ballmer said governments that abandon Microsoft are more interested in making a political statement than using the best and most affordable software."
The same assertion could be lobbed at governments who prefer MS offerings. After all, when the Munich city council voted for the adoption of the Linux offer, all parties (and that's quite a number) voted in favour, bar one: the conservatives, who in Munich are in opposition, but are governing Bavaria by a large majority.
BTW, the prime minister of Bavaria is an huge Gates admirer.
It's a smart move on Toronto Star's point. Why would this be news? It isn't. Nobody in Toronto is concerned about how local government in Germany works. So why is is in the paper? Look at the ads. Microsoft, Dell, etc. Now, if it was your paper, are you going to run stories complimentary to your benefactors, or ones that paint them in a bad light. I don't read the Toronto Star, but since most papers are interchangeable in their content and (in Canada at least) are all owned by two or three companies, hence the reason for not lending much credibility to newspapers. Sorry.
"Ballmer said governments that abandon Microsoft are more interested in making a political statement than using the best and most affordable software."
What constitutes the "best" software? Most features? Maybe. Best stability? Maybe. Best security? Maybe.
For some situations and groups, the best software is software the furthers goals like avoiding dependance on a foreign company with a bad track record for business practices and near monopoly control. Like, say, foreign governments. Which are, after all, political institutions. Why wouldn't they make political statements?
Microsoft gets it, all right. They will do their best to make decisions other than for immediate $$ spent look silly, but for some in this world there really is more to it than that. Microsoft knows to fear thinking like this, because it cannot be controlled.
"The people who are making business decisions based on where are the applications, what is the value, what is the lowest cost of ownership, we're not losing them."
At, but there again value and cost of ownership are not always strictly a matter of $$. Frankly, it's a pretty cold world when that is true, and it's one of the things I dislike about the US. In any case, to solve the chicken egg problem of applications first or users first, the users typically have to take the plunge.
Ballmer can chuckle all he likes. What he isn't mentioning is that first adapters always, ALWAYS, have a hard time. Did we make fun of the first people who bought those really expensive first generation DVD players? Do universities shrink away from paying Peoplesoft $$$$$$$$$ for rather unimpressive systems that still need lots of tweaking? (I'm still convinced if a couple of them had hired GNU enterprise with that $$$ everyone would have been better off, but that's another post.) Change is tough. But for each person or group that makes the change, things are ironed out and it gets easier next time around. And as things get easier, a proven track record emerges, and the trail is paved, more people start to go down it.
So sure, Munich is chopping down trees to make a road through the forest right now. But the next time around someone else will have an example to follow, and will also do some more road clearing.
I'm quite sure if Munich had made the decision to switch over to Macintosh, they'd be facing many of the same problems. To a certain extent change is just hard, period. But the thinking here is long term, not short term. The Media reports short term, Microsoft laughs in the short term. But I'm a lot more interested in the long term, when Munich can look at the next upgrade cycle prices for Windows and laugh in their face.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
Maybe governments aren't going to make the best Linux references. History shows governments consistently manage to turn the most well-intentioned efforts into boondoggles.
I think there are more than enough geeks out there that would like to see the Munich transition work. Why don't they (Munich) put up a site with the problems they are experiencing and ask for a little help? If they were to list the environment and the problems they are having, with an email addy for response collection, I bet they would be flooded with support.
That's another thing.
It's costing them lots of money, but that money is being charged them by SUSE. Not Microsoft; SUSE. A German company. Even if SUSE cost more *long term* than Microsoft it might ultimately be beneficial to go with that, because that's maybe 10% more money spent on the OS and 100% more money staying within the german economy.
America is corporate welfare central. If this were Seattle doing the opposite we might well be seeing glowing commendations of how they had the guts to support local businesses.
Microsoft thinks about realoading Windows XP (like Win98 SE) so if they would recalculate, even the Microsoft Plan would have to change, too.
' The migration plan is more complex than simply replacing Windows with Linux, according to an outline provided by the Munich information department. Studies on open-source security, desktop ergonomics and the software components' stability and compatibility with other applications will be included in the process.
But according to Computerwoche and other reports, the city lacks the funds to invest in the planned testing and development of an open-source solution. IBM and Germany-based Linux distributor SuSE are expected to help offset the costs of the migration by supplying technical support and conducting some of the studies that the Munich city council has requested.
Reports in Computerwoche also stated that local vendors who currently code applications for the city were experiencing problems in developing applications for the open-source operating system, since they are more familiar with Windows than Linux.'
Yes it's more expensive to actually worry about security and design system that factors in security needs.
It would much cheaper in the short term to just toss the latest MS product on hundreds of machines and ignore security totally. Nobody need do a study, the answer is MS security is almost non existent.
And the last paragraph speaks volumes about relying on an MS monoculture. Noow those vendors are screwed and any venor who can provide an open source solution for Munich will get there contract.
Did anyone follow the Newnham Council decision?
This seemed to fall on lack of Outlook
compatibility, despite that suse offers an
Outlook server... strange.
The cost of the software is usually only 10% of the implementation if that of many big projects. The truth is that I work at a large forturne 100 company and time and time again we pair commercial vs open-source software against each other. And we have a LOT of open source folks in our company heck some of them are major contributors to GNU projects. But in the big scale of things many times the open source stuff just don't cut it.
Munich might have saved cost of future licences, but who will install a network printer on their Linux machine easily? Unfriendliness of Linux interfaces, the learning cost and uncertainty of changes and upgrades carries a cost. May be large organizations can afford such cost, smaller ones cannot. And apparently the cost argument is to entice the smaller ones.
Has Munich?
You can either pay in cash or you can pay in time.
The funny thing no linux person ever mentions is how long it takes anyone to learn it. We have people at linux meetings that take months of their lives to be able to do the simplest thing. Things that they could do in windows on day 1. Cost needs to be put into perspective. You pay one way or the other. Free software in my experience means much more time going through the learning process.
I work for a fortune 500 company that has done many many large Windows rollouts. We also have done many Solaris and Linux installations. Guess what... Windows is often more difficult, more expensive and less stable than Solaris or Linux. Real "objective" reporting. Sounds like the media is appealing to it's sponsors (Microsoft).
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= - The Celtic - =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Not two weeks ago, slashdot was discussing this.
But how about the angle that the US is known to write software to sabatoge the economies of other countries, making independent, inspectable code a matter of national security. Of course, if it isn't the government sabatoging your economy, then Microsoft clearly is.
Webmonkey may be closing its doors, but at least we still have monkey-boy Steve Ballmer 8)
-1, Offtopic? Sheesh - I blew noodles out my nose over this. It should be +5, Funny!
I use Windows XP professional, Mac OS X and Redhat Professional WS 3 and Linux still isn't there and won't be for awhile. I don't think that anybody that claims that Linux can compete one to one now with the two other major options has a grasp on the complexity the diverse needs of business and individuals. One thing in my mind that needs to gel is one dominant environment. I'm talking about a common development toolset, libraries, GUI... etc One paradigm needs to rule the roost to provide commonality for developers. A big reason for the success of Windows and the Mac is tight rules for the way things work.
A lot of work needs to be done. A lot of integration and automation needs to be worked on to fill the needs of the common computer user, that would be the user that treats the computer as an appliance. Until I can just plug any hardware in and get the kind of support that Windows and Mac OS X provide for it Linux won't be challenging for real. My fear is that it might be hyped to much and those that try it now, and find it unacceptable, will be soured by the experience and be hesitant to try it again.
I hate to tell everyone that - just because the software is free, patch, source code availability - the sustaining and support is majority of the cost in any software installation.
Munich Struggling with Linux Taxation?
...how much less trouble would I have switching from Linux to Windows?
Cheers,
RoadkillBunny
It's not like transitions from one MS to another MS product is easy either. We recently switched from Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 2003 and it was a major PITA. Their deployment guide makes it sound easy but their transition tools where major POS.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
Lets review some of the reasons Munich made their initial decision of Linux over MS:
1. Freedom: total independence from an overseas monopoly.
2. Public interest: a large % of project dollars is going to local integrators paychecks instead of overseas to Redmond.
3. ROI: long term analysis showed that, even though initial Linux cost was greater, Linux would
soon proove cheaper.
4. Security: aside from all the MS vulnerabilities (viri, worms, etc) the Munich government is not
woried about the possibility of closed source spyware.
5. Future model: any lessons learned by this project only help ensure the success and low cost of deploying Linux in other government agencies.
Maybe I'm just really bad with spreadsheets, but I've never gotten a five year projection on Windows v Linux to come out in favor of Windows and positively never had OpenOffice come in as more expensive than Office on Windows.
Hey, if there any accounting types here maybe we could do kind of an open source TCO analysis. Make it public and let people comment on it. Pick a medium size business as a standard...say 500 work stations. Is that fair? Too big? Too small? It's hard because there are so many variables depending on what type of business it is. Ernie Ball was able to throw MS out. Be interesting to see how their IT costs have changed. And how do you include a $90,000 BSA fine in TCO calculations?
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Why is Ballmer gloating like this wasn't expected? Microsoft has worked for over a decade to make their applications into Roach Motels for your data, and the cost (not just financial) of transitioning away from them as painful as possible-- to make many of their dissatisfied customers see sticking with MS as the lesser of two evils, and dissuade them from switching to something else.
I'm not surprised at all that making the switch away from Microsoft is a rocky and expensive road, after all the work Microsoft has done to make it that way... but once it's done, it's done and you're no longer a slave to Microsoft's licensing whims and mandated upgrades, which in the long run would be much more expensive.
~Philly
One thing that I don't see being noted here is that it's not just how much something costs, but who gets paid. If Munich uses Linux then a lot of the costs stay local, if they use MS then the business is exported. Even if MS uses locals a lot of the money goes to Redmond. With all the bitching about lost jobs we have to remember that other countries have the same problems and Linux is one solution. You can get the best minds around the world working for you, but still keep your business local.
I keep hearing this story and every time it's somebody from microsoft telling it. From what I hear the problems aren't technical but involve training staff on new applications. There's no doubt that once everybody's up to speed on the new system that it will be less costly in the long term than a Microsoft solution.
It seems MS has been briefing their employees on what to say about the Munich linux conversion, this all proves that we have them worried.
"Laugh-a while you can, Monkey Boy!"
I'd be willing to bet there wasn't a transition plan in Munich beyond "Lets format those Windows machines with Linux and life will be happy!" That's the typical silver bullet attitude that management seems to have ("Lets use SCRUM and all our development problems will go away!", "Let's use XML and all our development problems will go away!", "Let's use Object Oriented Programming and all our development problems will go away!")
If we could get Munich and some Linux advocates together, we could go in there, look at their setup and what they need to do, architect a solution, show their guys (Who probably only have Windows experience) how to set the machines up, and be done in time for beer and sausages at the local pub. The Linux advocates get to put "Helped government of Munich set up their systems" on their resume, Munich gets a working setup that puts anything Microsoft ever built to shame and Ballmer pulls out his last 3 hairs in frustration. All in all time well spent, I think.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Windows Upgrade CD's, with support, $70. From day One.
My advantage has ALWAYS been limiting the Microsoft exposure as much as possible. I saw the writing on the wall with Windows 95 (refused to deploy it -- stuck w/ WFW 3.11). Beyond the desktop, word, and excel Microsoft has been snuffed by me.
... we were always operational and virus free. Always. With Windows now on a segmented network and only running for AutoCAD needs (everything else has been migrated across the offices I oversee) ... my price just went up (I gave myself a bonus :).
... add in the fact that all these Windows virus' just became a moot point -- and everybody walks away happy, working, and with more money in their pocket. Except Microsoft...
The out come? When everyones network, except mine, were going to hell in a hand basket
The customer just sees what they didn't have to spend on Windows licensing, the difference between said licensing and the cost of Panther (OS X) [approved upgrade -- which costs ME] -- and the huge savings across all the Linux servers and those Linux desktops that have been deployed (OS X is winning w/ me).
Upgrade my cost to them while showing them a bill that is 1/2 if not 2/3 the full cost of staying with Windows licensing
Last time I checked, Windows' upgrades from one version to the next were not free by any definition.
Yes it is. Its free as in Kazaa.
Someone knows, which company switches all the 1000s of PCs to Linux?
One of the secertaries or assistants clicks on that zip file... in my office, where I chose to go to open office instead of the next version of MS office, everyone elses docs and xls' got destroyed and had to be restored from a month old backup. While they stood around I kept on working... cuz my sxw and sxc files were still there. Yup that was expensive, cuz the IT guy had to come out, no one here knows how to restore from backup... I luv luddites.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
1. there is not ever going to be a city-wide rollout of anything that will go smoothly (a combination of size and bureaucratic tendencies to make things onerously difficult will assure that)
2. Ballmer may feel free to gloat, but somehow I doubt an upgrade rollout of the latest rev of their viral breeder would have faired much better.
3. A shame this whole article reads like a hack job.
Married ... with Children - Dud Bowl II
See (with Babelfish if you don't read German) http://www01.silicon.de/cpo/ts-csh/detail.php?nr=1 3043
- Linux-MS_030403.pdf and p df
For background, see http://www.spd-rathaus-muenchen.de/presse/press14
http://www.muenchen.de/aktuell/clientstudie_kurz.
I run a Samba+LDAP "windows" domain. Why? We could have purchased a windows server. It would have been easier for me. We paid a consultant a fair amount for the help (this was before Samba 3 or TNG). Sometimes printing goes tits up for no discernable reason.
It's still worth it. We were hit by a software audit- no need to track CALS. We set up authenticated wireless access - again, no need to ask, "Per seat or per connection?" and be damned either way. We own the solution, we're not renting. No "All your base..." click-through agreements. (Which I render null and void anyway by crossing my fingers as I click.)
Security is better. The server is immune to win32 attacks (though some smb protocol vulnerabilities may be yet be present).
The technical part of my job presents enough challenges without precious "mental bandwidth" (in Ballmer's phrase) being syphoned off on distractions like licensing. It's INCREDIBLY time-consuming and that effort is totally wasted. It doesn't advance our mission at all.
I just want to do tech stuff. Proprietary software introduces friction that has to be weighed against any purported benefits like a more polished UI.
Ok, it's more costly and complex than anticipated, but not necessarily more costly and complex than deploying a Microsoft solution (or just keeping it in place, for that matter).
Have you Meta Meta Moderated lately?
For example, I've been trying to get my students to understand why, when they're using KDE, they have to unmount their floppies before they can read another one. KDE already automatically mounts floppies when you click on the icon. How hard would it be to make it check to see if the same disk really is in the drive the next time they click it, and if not, then unmount and mount again? Little things like this are unnerving.
Last summer I wrote a long letter to someone describing my experiences setting up Samba on a set of computers. I've been sitting with this letter for along time, and I'll try to edit it down a little. I hope there's no taboo against long posts. I've been reading Slashdot for two or three years, now, and haven't noticed any, but I don't always notice everything.
This was my situation: I wanted to install Linux as double-boot systems with (pre-existing) Windows on nine computers in my elementary school classroom. This pool of computers changes fairly frequently as new ones may be donated (read: mainly built, bought, or reconstructed by the teacher) and old ones just seem too slow.
Eventually, I intend to remove Windows completely from most of these computers, but I want to do it gradually, making sure I have some fall-back position while working out kinks and bugs during actual classroom use. I only have limited file-sharing needs (floppy disks are adequate in most cases, mainly so the students can work further on their files at home), but all the computers absolutely must share the same printer, an aging (but built back when they really knew how to build them!) HP Laserjet 4, attached to the main computer that I personally use.
Here's what I wrote:
==
My objective is to share the printer transparently - without any need for reconfiguration - no matter what I boot into (having the printer attached to my pc) or what the eight student computers boot up into. I want to be able to add new computers and take away old ones without having to reconfigure anything except the computer being added.
Obviously, Samba is the way to go.
Now, I agree with you that, with Samba, interoperability with Linux and Windows has been achieved. However, compared to Windows or Macintosh, setting it up is a pain in the tush, and far beyond the capabilities of a typical home user or small office user, particularly if that person is not already familiar with Unix.
My question is - why isn't Samba installation and setup easier? Why can't it be mostly automatic like so many other things already are? Linux programmers have already programmed so many clever utilities for automatically installing everything from hardware identification to disk partitioning, to software dependency checking etc. etc. What's been accomplished already is really quite remarkable. It seems to me that adding an automatic Samba setup would be trivial in comparison. It also seems to me that if they did add it, they might have a profound effect on the adoption of Linux in home and small office networks everywhere.
For the sake of argument, let me describe just a little of what I've gone through to get Samba set up the way I wanted.
First, I do think that I understand pc's better than most non-programmers, having owned and played with them for over twenty years now. (I still have my old Apple ][+ stowed away under the house). I've thought of installing Linux for a couple years now, having first played with SuSE version 4 or 5 a while back. I've tried various versions of Red Hat and Mandrake and found them easy to set up and get working. The only hangup has been sharing the printer. My teaching job generally requires fifty to sixty hours of work each week, so time is limited. I'd get Linux installed, fail to quickly get the printer shared, say to heck with it and revert to Windows. There's simply no time to fool with it.
Ah, but then summer arrived and for on
"User friendly" isn't the problem. Clicking on an icon is the same. There's just a bit of training so people will know which icon to click on and where it is.
The big problem is that there are lots of little apps that need to be ported. This is the same in any migration. Someone, somewhere throws together a database for some reason and it becomes "mission critical" to that department.
So, you have apps that you knew nothing about....
That need to be ported....
With 100% functionality....
Prior to your roll-out....
And it is probably badly written with no thought to managability or portability or even data integrity....
And THAT is what eats up your budget.
At work we're migrating from Exchange 2000 to 2003. Encountered so far: Undocumented limitations, "That's a feature, not a bug", regressions from previous versions, unexplained failures with oh-so-helpful (ie nonexistent) diagnostic information... And this is a clean install!
Ballmer's right, it's sooooooo much easier than Linux.
As much as I'd like to commiserate, there simply isn't enough detail on what the problems are which makes it difficult for anyone to help. But Ballmer reveals more than is probably healthy for Microsoft here:
However, this is a compelling reason to stand on the side of free software for freedom, rather than low price (and this, again, is one reason why "free software" trumps "open source"). Low price may get people's attention, but sometimes unexpected expenses come up and what will keep people around (such as the Chinese government as mentioned in the article) in the long term is software freedom--being able to inspect, share, and modify the software. When you base your decision on software freedom, software proprietors simply can't compete no matter how much they mark down the cost of their software. They know that and that is where free software can win. Technical merit can be had with enough time and effort, and low price is a side effect of software freedom. But the freedom itself, by definition, is not something you can get from any proprietor. The free software community does themselves a disservice by not teaching people about software freedom.
Digital Citizen
Finally, is it just me or does Ballmer look really evil in that photo?
Obviously you cropped the picture. Sure he's got his shoulder devil whispering to him on one side, but you cut out the other side where you can see his shoulder angel! That's slashdot for you...
I wanted read some other sources about this issue ....
Keep on eye on Google news.
I admin a 7000 node network with 35000 email accounts, we have a 4 server cluster for email (postfix, courier imap) it easily supports the 35000 customers, when we were building the network we looked at everyone, to do a MS solution with exchange we would have needed between 100 and 150 dual proc xeon 2.4 procs (because exchange only supports between 200 and 300 accounts per box).. Not to mention the fact that we would then need 100-150 copies of Advanced Server at 1500 a pop... instead we have a very comparable email system for less than 8 grand... Oh yeah and we don't spend 8-10 hours a day rebuilding corrupted exchange databases.
Ballmer shows us exactly what's wrong with Micro$oft - they just don't get it. Many countries and companies in the world are moving or investigating moving from Micro$oft.
Ballmer and Micro$oft care about making money - Linux "cares" about giving you what you want (or need). It sure meets my needs. That's why I use it exclusively.
David
It might be worthwhile for these cities who are moving to Linux to keep a document project about their trials and tribulations ... a sort of Linux KB directed towards large geographical distribution, and then linking this documentation resource into the HowTos, man pages, and what-not. It would cover all the Linux distros. However I would hate to be the document maintainer for that task. Probably something like this already exists, however before you mod me down, provide a link. Thanks.
if the city of toronto believes this crap, then it shows what leadership that city has.
what needs to be pointed out is the fact that the transition isnt cheap, but, it's very well worth it because in the long run, their spending costs will go down quiet a bit, because the rest will maintain itself. set up some crontabs and voila, all the machines can stay properly updated.
- Resistance among the user base (people don't like change)
- Vast number of different applications/suppliers to work with
- Lack of support from on-high
None of these problems are specific to linux - but rather to any attempt to introduce change on massive scale. Nowhere are they saying that "linux doesn't work"Damn right!
Heh...apparently it comes as a total shock for Ballmer that not everyone is all about the almighty dollar (or euro or whatever). Yes, Munich did this to save money in the short term, but in the long term it is also politics. I just hope it works out for Munich, then hopefully more cities and goverments will follow.
Well, Balmer DOES have a point when he points out that political motives were behind the move. I will and do not doubt its ultimate wisdom, but since anti-MS sentiment is rampant in Europe and anti-competitive behaviour as exhibited by MS in the past is taken very seriously over here, there's bound to be a political motive. Which should never be an argument in deciding what to base your IT infrastructure on. Of course, the security center is a joke. As if a cool dashboard is going to help if your car is designed so badly that the wheels are falling off.
----- One learns to itch where one can scratch.
The point is, it's costing more than they thought, that doesn't mean it's costing more than it would cost to use Windows.
Nice spin there, Steve. I wonder why people don't trust you?
What Ballmer fails to crow about, nor fails to mention is the cost and expense of the initial Microsoft rollout.
Given the initial rollout cost in a Microsoft platform would be in the billions for a new rollout, it's not hard to conceive that reconfiguring an entire civic network structure to embrace open source technology would have considerable costs than continuing to limp along with an insecure, bloated, and closed source technology family. This is due, by and large, with Munich technicians having already gathered years of experiencing patching Windows environments every day, and so therefore they can do this much quicker than they had been doing so originally.
Embracing a platform may have its speed bumps, but the success and self satisfaction of being able to deploy secure clients and servers will soon outweigh any teething problems the Munich techs are currently experiencing.
It's early days yet, and Ballmer's criticisms of open source rollouts of this magnitude are truly smoke and mirrors if subject to the clarity of a true competitive analysis once all of the facts and figures have been submitted and tallied.
A good analogy would be moving the tire swing of a gorilla. It is going to take awhile before "JoJo" realizes it is a good thing.
Harpo Tunnel Syndrome--my wrist feels funny.
I don't know why I'm posting a comment. Not like people read stuff down here anyway.
Tyler Hamilton is a hack, and here's why:
"They're saying it's more expensive," Ballmer told the Star yesterday.
Why is it more expensive, Tyler? Why are you relying on a secondary, unauthoritative, possibly hostile source for your information? Is it really more expensive? Did you bother calling Munich?
And then this:
They all cite the perceived lower cost of open-source alternatives, though organizations pay to customize and support them. But their reasons for choosing Linux are often more political than economic.
Why, Tyler? Because Ballmer says they do?
Ballmer said governments that abandon Microsoft are more interested in making a political statement than using the best and most affordable software.
That's the only source this guy has that isn't anecdotal. Even then, it's secondary. And Tyler never even bothered to directly interview Ballmer either.
6th grade research projects show more effort.
The same way you do for any product on the market today. Who knows where Windows, Office, Exchange or anything else is going to be in five years. What the hell difference does it make in a cost projection?
There are a lot of loose ends you'd better tie up in your arguement.
Have you ever actually done a cost projection? Sometimes you use a 3 year life cycle window, sometimes five, depending on long you're guessing it will be until EOM (End of Mission), and that's always a guesstimate. Hardware used to be 3 automatically, now they want five.
Their core strength is in Server market...
Who are you talking about? Sun? OpenOffice isn't managed by Sun, you're comparing apples and oranges. You might be confusing OpenOffice with StarOffice.
and this 'desktop' redheaded stepchild they purchased from a failed German company is the 'flagship' that people are supposed to choose instead of Microsoft Office?
Spoken like someone who has never tried it. Unfortunately for MS swills like yourself it's becoming a very capable product. More than enough functionality for all but the top tier of productivity users in most organizations. And not even missing a whole lot on the top level. The biggest complaint from the power users was it needed something like Access. The DBA's were very happy it didn't have it because if you've ever actually worked in IT, you'd know that one of the things DBA's absolutely f'ing hate is trying to upsize some junior genius first Access database that the department now considers mission critical. Complete with tables that don't relate, zero normalization, nvarchar (50) for every char field, huge blocks of NULL values inside never ending do-all tables. But how would you know anything about that?
I think you're the one who needs to go back to school, Einstein. And, by the way, you spelled "argument" wrong.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
As this is slashdot, I'm surprised no-one's seemed to pick on this. Balmer accuses Munich of making a political decision - FUCKING RIGHTS! THE CHOICE OF FREEDOM OVER FOREIGN DOMINATION AND CONTROL IS ALWAYS POLITICAL! And congratulations to various governments for figuring out that we the people should not be owned by a fucking corporation!
Ahhh..you've proved my point...thanks
A correction:
And YES it CAN cost more than Linux
should be
And YES it CAN cost more than Windows
I didn't see any particular details on what was going slowly with their implementation... The article seemed to focus more around Balmer's reaction to it...
Anyone know more about what are the install issues? Is it a training issue on the part of the implementors or scalability and requirements-meeting on the part of the Linux distro they are using?
The reaction that I'm afraid we'll see from most people on slashdot is one of denial that open source can be hard to integrate... Let's see what the real issues are and address them rather than making up excuses.
Vince
How is the above posting -1 off-topic when it directly relates to the article?
If you want to give out -1's, make this one FLAMEBAIT, since it's the only time you'll get it right.
Eventually someone will make a Linux distribution customised for municipal administrations. One that will be possible to deploy quickly in any city of the world. What is needed is for these governments to realise the importance of contributing back their solutions. If Munich solves their migration problems, they should share the solutions with Paris, Beijing, Bangalore and Austin...
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
Wired has an English summary of the information in the German press:
6 22 36,00.html
http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,
According to the story, here are the major problems, aside from some resistence among city hall staffers:
1. Munich insists on a whole bunch of studies into topics like Open Source security, desktop ergonomics, and software component stability and compatibility as part of the transition, but wants someone else (i.e. IBM and SuSE) to pay for them.
2. Local custom software contractors don't know how to write Linux apps.
Obviously, the first problem has more to do with politics than technology (to paraphrase Ballmer). You can always raise costs by wrapping something in red tape.
The second is a real technical problem, but it also occurs trying to move older Windows apps (i.e. 95, 98) to newer Windows versions. Solution: write Web apps, bozos (that way, if they ever want to go to yet another OS on the desktop, their apps will still work). The real problem is that they still think writing custom client-side apps in *any* OS is a good idea.
What we need is migration software. Something that runs on a Windows server, archives the data and translates settings and provide sample (drop in go) config files for the Linux/UNIX counter parts.
I write similar software. Only, migration from one Linux service to another like SQL servers or LDAP servers. But I will never develop such on Windows as that would require me to install Windows on some poor computer. But, I'm sure many others have a Windows box with Visual Studio on it so this is what we need to tackle.
Besides, I wonder if Microsoft would start getting worried if all this GPL code started popping up in Win32 land on account of transition programs for each Win32 program.
I think SuSE is pronounced "soossuh", going by general German pronunciation rules. Personally I think that sounds too weird around English speakers and I pronounce it Susie, like the girl.
Anyway, the thing is that you have found SuSE tricky to set up, and that it doesn't comes with stuff you need. That's because SuSE is not suited for your kind of needs. I don't like it either. YAST is a disaster area.
what's a runlevel
Aside from the fact that you should not be running *nix if you don't know about runlevels (likewise you shouldn't be running NT if you don't know about Services - no they're not the same thing), that is again down to SuSE being rubbish. I don't know any other distro which expects you to set up the runlevel configuration after installing daemons. A competent admin should know how to do it, but a competent distro should do it for you.
Personally I switched to Debian from RedHat and other commercial distros because they don't get the basics right.
RedHat is just great if you are happy with an out-the-box install but I always got into dependency hell whenever I wanted to change anything. Trying to build the most recent Gnome for RedHat 5.1 was the straw that broke the camels back. It put me off Linux for about a year.
SuSE was one of the first distros I tried and it was OK but the structure of the installation CDs was horrid and I couldn't find the stuff I wanted. Lately my work deployed SuSE (because RedHat doesn't come with the "heartbeat" package, and a non-commercial distro would be incomprehensible to mgmt) and I had to help the guy doing the deployment because I was the only one who really knew Linux. I hit the runlevel problem with everything we installed that wasn't in the base install. I was sort of embarrassed for SuSE. Anyway, I gave the guy a runlevel tutorial and now he copes. No-one I've met likes YaST.
So, I run Debian. I have no dependency issues thanks to apt. Its well supported online via mailing lists and IRC; the documentation (/usr/share/doc) is usually pretty damn good too. If I install a daemon, it configures it there and then to startup with the system, and the configuration will work without any tweaking. I just can't wait for Perens to sort out UserLinux so it's possible to get commercial support.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
About O'Reilly books, you call them "forbidding" and express surprise when you found one readable.
That's the whole reason why those books are liked! They are all readable, and the best ones are actually fun to read, and yet manage to be both correct and complete. I hate the books that "try" to be readable by dumbing everything down and filling themselves with pictures. This is fine for Management books but for christ's sake you can't document a technical subject without getting technical!
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
Since when do transition's ever go well, especially something this large scale?
Hey Balmer, people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
Josh
Linus should also make a visit and poke around to figure out what is really going on. Out Balmer Balmer with counter-PR.
Table-ized A.I.
Well i guess you gotta hand it to Balmer in a way, hes a man of peace: when Saddam started trading oil in euros, Microsofts friend George W. Bush blew his palace up and killed several thousend of his people, but when Munich decides it doesnt want to give MS a license to print money, not a shot is fired, just some harmless press conferences, they should be lucky Bill didnt even nuke them!
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
That's a huge win for Munich--keeping the money in- country.
I imagine that by doing the work with IBM they are keeping far more money (as a percentage of the contract) in-country as opposed to pissing it away to Redmond, WA, USA.
Ballmer can laugh all he wants, but for his software and organization to provide the same value, they would probably have to *pay* Munich to use it.
I can use all the MS products I want for free, through my employer, and I still can't stand using their stuff. I really prefer using Linux, especially now that OpenOffice is working so well.
>Yes, of course Ballmer would like us to believe that a Windows to Windows transition of more than ten thousand computers would just go smooth as silk.
They had some issues at first too and now are reaping the rewards.
Conversations are always difficult, most windows admins could write books regarding moving from one version of windows to another let alone a whole different operating system and suite of apps. Considering this article is has almost no facts or information other than Ballmer gloating its impossible to tell if something catastrophic has happened or its just another day working in IT.
Here's why companies outsource. It isn't capital costs. It's labor. They're buying time, which is really what wealth is made of, at wholesale prices. If you guys want Linux to win. Money isn't the issue. Time is. Make it take less time to properly configure. Make it take less time to deploy across an enterprise. Make it automate the rote tasks normally done by an administrator that wouldn't require his attention while they're being done. Make linus intuitive so people don't have to waste as much time on a learning curve. Once the problem becomes lost in the fog of capitalism, free, and not frequently a target of worms, trojans, and viruses aren't even close to the only answers that matter. Microsoft understands this, because, no matter what one might think of the programing, they are VERY good at business.
Yeah and Linux almost has as many games to play on it as the Mac!
"Linux needs to offer more than just lower costs to successfully compete..."
Linux is not competing. The information and ideas contained in a Linux distribution are free ($scoJoke). The toothpaste is out of the tube. There is no going back.
--
Confidence is the feeling you have before you understand the situation.
... and furthermore
A newspaper in Toronto, Canada is reporting about difficulties a Linux transition in Munich, Germany has. They are not even on the same continent.
I wonder what sources closer to the real thing have to say.
This choice was not made because of money. If you remember the windows bid was actually lower then the linux bid.
Oddly enough Munich chose linux because of freedom!. Freedom to dictate their own upgrade schedule and freedom to exclude or include software of their choice. Of course there was also the freedom to switch vendors if they wanted to.
I guess cities and corporations value freedom as much as humans do.
The best way to support the US war effort is to continue buying American products.
"How can you be making excuses about and absolute FAILURE? What happened here, plain and simple, is that they messed up, and Windows was the better choice"
An investment of 10's of _millions_ dollars is not judged a "failure" one year into it. This is long term investment.
--
Confidence is the feeling you have before you understand the situation.
... and furthermore
Many of the backbone technologies are easy, or at least don't matter very much. Such as which smtp server(s) they choose for the Munich backbone -- that shouldn't matter much. However the desktop issues in a city are many. To be specific:
Last time I checked, Windows' upgrades from one version to the next were not free by any definition.
Well, if (and this is a big if, because I simply don't know) Munich was comparing a Linux proposal to a Microsoft proposal that included the famous "Software Assurance" clause, then any nex version that came out during the next 3 years would, in fact, be free (or at least included as a part of the proposal already).
--something witty
Funny how there's no mention of all the future costs of licenses they've already saved themselves from
Saving time is the main reason for spending money on computers in the first place. If something costs slightly less to do if a computer is used, then the computer is essentially free. Part of the equation here is the OS.
If it takes more time to do the same thing using Linux (due to some lack of application which is available in Windows possibly) then there are no savings.
What a lot of the Slashdot crowd tend to forget, an OS is the means for the application required to talk with the hardware. If a good applications does not exist, then all the savings you make on the OS are pointless.
This guy is a liar, look at his past posts. He is simply offering his political view, not facts.
Uhmm, I don't really think Steve Ballmer is a reliable source... :P
It occurred to me recently, after having lost another file to a PC lockup, that the enormous costs of transisioning from manual business machines to PCs (over the past twenty years) are not reflected in MS's profits. The costs of learning all this new technology and the costs of all those lost files and other inefficiencies have been absorbed by the users. The economic gains have been split by the organizations that have bought PCs and Microsoft.
With Linux the costs are more equally distributed and more available for realistic analysis. What that means is that Microsoft is at its peak now in terms of being rich, fat, and happy. The period of increasing returns for them are over and that of diminishing returns on investment have begun. Mr. Balmer shouldn't gloat (like saying the sun shouldn't shine) over the transision costs of changing operating systems because (one) the costs were originally greater to transision from manual machines to PCs but Microsoft didn't pay those costs. And (two) each movement of a large organization from Windows to Linux is cheaper as the unforseen problems and their solutions get shared by the Linux community.
In their defense, Windows is a lot easier to use than Linux and Windows is not dominated by the computer geek mentality that continues to cripple Linux. Windows is dominated by the 'make Microsoft rich by providing useful tools that increase worker productivity' mentality. Since MS has been able to provide their solutions so far at a cost that is much less than the value of productivity gains of their product, they have won spectactularly over all their competitors. But that will change and is changing with every new Linux inplementation.
These guys in Redmond shouldn't gloat, it's makes them look 'white trash' and insults their customers who are not caught up in this American "business is a football game" mentality.
If the CEO of Novell was smart he would jump all over this and make it happen if it cost him money. Combination of Suse and Novell directory services, zenworks, ximian etc would allow this migration to succeed wildly.
Novell now has all the tools to be a very successful vendor for enterprise systems. Munich could be a showplace of their technologies and one could certainly imagine an unending series of press releases and white papers on how great edirectory is working out or groupwise makes people more efficient.
If I was novell I would do this at zero profit or even take a loss. The returns would be huge.
The best way to support the US war effort is to continue buying American products.
In any particular new frontier there will be challanges which come up. The unknown is a hard thing to forecast. It can, at times, cause a great deal of hardship. Perseverance is required in any worthwhile venture. Nay-sayers will point at the hardships as a way to bolster their own argument and to convince others to not try. This is sometimes referred to as FUD.
Looking at my notes form a while back, from an Economist article and from Slashdot and other coverage, I see there is some variation in teh description fo Mr Ballmer's trip to Munich.
Was it a holiday he happened to be on, with his family, in Switzerland, previously planned and booked, or was it a special trip from America to Germany for a big piece of business?
Notes: "Ernst Wolowicz is Mayor Ude's chief of staff.
According to Wolowicz, who attended the meeting, Ballmer told Ude he came from a skiing trip to pay his respects. Microsoft now says Ballmer was on a scheduled business trip in Germany."
This isn't the biggest of things, but I would like to see it cleared up - which is the true description of his attendance upon Munich?
Ballmer claims the City of Munich is having problems. Where's the proof? Anyone got any URI's that verifies Ballmer's claims or is this just more FUD from MS?
I have a very small mind and must live with it.
-- E. Dijkstra
We actually had another article posted to the Linux Users Group of Cleveland website way back on February 11th. Full text of the article can be read here.
I read the article, and I still haven't got any clue to what the problem is. I wouldn't be surprised, if it turned out, the problem really is the 99% of people still thinking Windows is the only option. It is not like Linux doesn't have the applications needed for the average office, but maybe accessing your data stored in proprietary formats is a problem. That means switching is a good idea, the sooner the better. Because the price of switching doesn't go down if you wait. And the higher the price of switching away from Windows becomes, the higher Microsoft can turn the price of staying. Deploying Linux in an organization doesn't mean you need everybody to have Linux expertise. But you do need a few people with Linux expertise.
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
Fact is that MS has been kicked in the balls and is just now standing up. Watch for the full MS PR campaign to kick back soon.
Nice try Ballmer!
~~~~~
I'm not surprised that the transition from Windows to Linux has its share of bumps in Munich.
I work in a small non-profit organization and we had our share of difficulties migrating from Windows NT4 to Windows 2000. It was several months before we had all of the bugs worked out.
So no doubt shifting between completely different operating systems in a very large organization like a municipal government is going to have its initial upfront glitches.
And of course one of the big problems is going to be one of training. If most of the tech staff is trained in the "Windows" way of doing things it'll be a while before they learn how to do things the Linux way and as others have mentioned some will resist having to learn new skills. That's a natural thing in any workplace environment.
That "inertia" is part of what's helped perpetuate the Microsoft monopoly.
But the key thing will be what happens in the long run. Once the tech staff are fully trained and comfortable in the Linux environment the city of Munich will find significant cost savings.
Its also why even though I work in a "Windows shop", I feel a need to learn as much as I can about Linux, because I think that in the long run my future employment prospects will depend on it.
I live in the UK. Find me a good laptop to buy for my university course next year without Windows XP in some flavour preinstalled. Explain to me why I should pay around 100 more for the privilege of an operating system I will use roughly 5% of the time and wouldn't miss.
It is because of this I am considering building my own easily stealable desktop and buying a PDA for note taking.
Or was there a link to something Munich-related above?
Somehow I doubt it's useability that's thier problem. Actually from what I've heard most of thier problem is that they overestimated the capabilities of WINE, and have trouble getting some special programs to run which they can't right away leave. So please tell me where you got the information that it was a useability problem? Or were you just guessing, and acting like you had a clue, and stating the predictable old cliches that are sure to get the usual microsoft zealot upmods.
True genius is grasping a situation like a peice of fruit, and peircing it just right so that it drains dry.
This argument is coming up again and again. It used to be true, but no longer is. The most likely companies to do the job are IBM and SuSE. IBM is American, SuSE is now 100%-Novell owned and therefore also American. Both will certainly most likely use local personal, but this is no different from Microsoft, whose German headquarters is based in Munich with several thousand employees.
** as in "toss into the trash can".
We don't see the world as it is, we see it as we are.
-- Anais Nin
Well, Mr. Balmer, I would say that Microsoft isn't doing to well in Munich either. Harharharhar.
Nobody said migration would be cheaper or easier, stupid. On the contrary, _everybody_ said it would be more tedious and expensive. But the majority also said it would pay of in the long run _and_ serve as a landmark for free software growth. And would be a desireble political statement.
Just go on. The more the process of migration recieves a bashing from MS, the stronger the impact will be when Munich migration has succeeded.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
are some of the benefits to switch to an open standards OS compared to Microsoft Windows.
/ WebsThePlace
:) search for 'microsoft tax evasion' and be prepared to be astounded if this is new to you. here's a link:8 &oe=UTF -8&q=microsoft+tax+evasion&spell=1
Arguing that switching will directly result in lower costs is not in the best interest of open source though.
Instead what should be emphasized in relation to government relations should be that the switch will benefit:
* security & stability
* internal market
this way the people's office will not be responsible for beneficiating one company and its monopoly at the expense of local entrepreneurs and jobs.
in the current situation buying a microsoft product does bring some benefit to their business associates serving the area, but only a marginal income because of the licensing costs that will be forwarded to microsoft. more info? read the sharecropper theory: http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2003/07/12
the sharecropper theory discusses the tax claimed by the landlord, one could then argue that this is of benefit to the state which again will tax microsoft bringing money back into the community. ohh well in denmark microsoft does most of its invoicing from ireland under special tax dispensation rules(after acquiring Navision ERP software they changed invoicing to be made from Ireland for "practical reasons").
Ohh well, then at least the american government benefit from taxing microsoft, sure marginally though
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-
ok, so if not even the state gets the taxes, why is microsoft still of value to the american people in general, there must be some benefit out of this whole corporation fostered..
ohh yes, microsoft sharecroppers(read the link earlier if you haven't yet, there's a slashdot thread as well). companies that deliver complimentary services naturally benefit in some way, until they become too important and they'll be bought.
so whats going on? why does america not try to regulate this instead of allowing the monopoly to continue. american gov has given up, no republican or democrat dare touching, they fear and try to get by knowing they can tax the employees even though symbolic.
if microsoft aren't stopped, they will end up buying the rest of the government. if capitalism is not regulated by the government, one entity will eventually given enough time evolve to buyout the company starting a dictatorship ruled by the shareholders until the rest of the population understand and revolt starting a civil war and after the revolution we can hope for something better..
I know, I went overboard, too extreme.. but some colors right?
even in a much lighter perspective its not hard to understand why at least gov's not being seattle/washington/usa/microsoft-shareholders can benefit from investing in a change although there are no lowering costs for the actual purchase of the license.
ohh.. if MS is this powerful, lets all invest in Micrsoft stocks then, that must be a sure winner right? ohh hehe.. yeah you do that and wait to see how the value drops like crazy when everyone who can't afford it revolts and support alternatives because capitalism failed and we've had enough!
communism fails if extreme, not all humans can be that unselfish to not exploit others given the chance
capitalism fails if extreme, no human are that unselfish that they will accept to be exploited by others if given the chance
both extremes cause revolution
you have to learn to love regulation
social liberalism is the balance
it may not be perfect, it may be a compromise,
but given the situation, its the best long term bet available.
No, I do not know what schadenfreude is, please tell me because I am dying to know...
-- Homer
The ratio of people to cake is too big
Ok, I find a fundemental problem with your statement. "SP2 will address..." Gee, interesting, something that is not yet out will address the problem that is being caused. Is the solution not to have the problem in the first place?
Frankly this is what sucks about the MS vision. "Today things will not work, but tomorrow all will be better". You are constantly chasing the dream.
That is why I use Open Source software even on Windows. I have very little headaches. Had one recently BECAUSE of IE and a new scam that Casino's spyware have.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
They needed Netscape to egg them into making Internet Explorer as good as it now is.
Please. Netscape? You must be joking. The best browser up until its development was stopped was Mosaic. The free code Netscape tried to mess up before adding new-ish graphics and selling it for money. Internet Explorer was an adequate 2nd. Netscape was third and thought they were first. Netscape was the name of the nebulous feer of the future. It had become redily appearent that microsoft had BADDLY miscalculated what a 'network' would look like, and how important is was. The weren't competing with Netscape per se, but rather the possibility they presented.
Could Netscape have "won" yeah, if they hadn't declared pre-mature victory and called their brokers. But they did that pretty early on. In many ways NT 5/2k is the second iteration of the lessons learned after that fantastic blunder. The third iteration is usually where Microsoft distinguished itself.
The lessons learned from Linux and open source in general should be paying dividends to Microsoft share holders and customers for a decade and more.
I wish I was there to help out... I'd gladly donate some time to assist them.
Most people dont even UNDERSTAND how Linux works, or how to use it, so you cant even hire qualified people (because no matter how good the admin is, you still need people to visit the desktops).
Most people don't even UNDERSTAND how Windows works. There are of course people who do, so you can hire qualified people. Linux is the same. There are plenty of people who know Linux well enough to be considered a qualified person.
And if you're speaking about difficulties with the GUI on the desktop, well I personally don't think that the average user who is limited to point-and-click would have any more difficulties pointing-and-clicking on KDE or Gnome than they would on Windows.
Have you tried Linux yet?
Leaving aside the gloating and the refutations:
If there is any truth in the gossip about 'not going too well' -- or even if there isn't -- there is something that the community could take part in, to help make a success of the pioneering aspects of the Munich transition. I don't know if there is already a 'Munich linux-transition wishlist website'. But such a thing could be a medium for discussion and problem-solving about teething problems, between the intrepid Munich IT people and the rest of the community. And its content could eventually help generate a blueprint for other transitions yet to come.
-wb-
(take Ballmer's word for it?) Even if it is more expensive, the money stays in Germany, in the EU, not going to the US. That's a good enough reason for many govts.
Posters recognized by their sig,
Odd, considering the article was about how such problems were costing them more money then they planned to spend.
Even more odd, the article did not mention how much more money Munich was spending as a result of these unmentioned problems.
The article would have been interesting if it stated either.
Steve
These are just normal transitional problems exaggerated out of proportion.
How much is Munich saving in licenses?
Latin me that, my trinity scholard.
Isn't the real issue that a one-time transition cost is better in the long run than having to pay license fees every year?
Let's see if Ballmer is gloating about Munich 5 years from now when Munich has all the bugs worked out of their transition, and never has to pay a single mark again for their OS.
"Last time I checked, Windows' upgrades from one version to the next were not free by any definition."
Do you work for free? Do you make more than the ave. Windows sysadmin? Is Red Hat sw free as in beer?
The fact that local software developers are being forced from their windows boxes might be a good thing for the Linux community, it creates expertise and allows them to sell an alternative to their windows products for all of their clients. (They will want to earn back their training!) Another poster stated that web apps are a solution to platform issues, I can from experience tell you its not! A lot of developers are just writing for MSIE and dont know or care about being compatible with other browsers.
Windows may be easier to get onto 14000 pc's simply because it was most likely on them when they were bought. Keeping windows updated is a bitch though, and expensive. Linux just takes that little bit longer to install on pc's due to driver problems and configuration, but once it's all setup, it's a sinch to update and maintain. And it's one hell of a lot safer aswell
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
Once the machine is set up and running, a Linux machine is just as easy to drive (IMHO). If your users prefer the Win95 interface, install one that looks the same. My GF runs WindowMaker on Debian and has never needed to use a command line and is completely comfortable with it despite no Unix background. Also ask MacOS X users if Unix is user friendly. Perhaps there is a transition/expectation problem for people who expect floppies to show up as "A:", not "/dev/fd0", but I'd love to see exactly *how* Linux is harder to use. Can anyone point to anything other than assertions?
As to your IT monkeys, what you are saying is, "baseball sucks because my football team doesn't know how to use these bat things".
On a similar tack, I also do not think that pretty, graphical OS installers matter in a corporate environment. Machines are deployed using Norton "Ghost" or some such. While pretty installers *may* be useful for home users (who usually buy an OS pre-loaded anyway), staff do not get to install their own OS unless they work for the IT department.
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
Why is choosing Linux over Windows a POLITICAL statement? Is Microsoft some kind of politicking engine?
... there might just be something to that...
Wait...
The Penguin Producer
One can only state this with backed up facts regarding "money-wise on the shorter run"; which is not mentioned in this statement. Yuck! Whatever was the best deal is something we cannot honestly ever find out. We can only speculate till some degree. Perhaps a very high degree in the (near) future, but currently? I don't think so.
When will journalists learn to take a more differentiated, subtle approach instead of one which they can't prove and which is as of now factually incorrect? On that very day i, the Anonymous Coward, will be the king of this country. I promise!
The most likely companies to do the job are IBM and SuSE. IBM is American, SuSE is now 100%-Novell owned and therefore also American.
This is where the nature of the software and the companies comes into play. Windows is a product, like a pencil, you buy it from them. They own it. The bottom line is that their products are treated like commodities. All the various licenses are used to support this point of view. The money goes from you, or Munich, to them. Neither Suse or IBM own linux, They are acting as distributors. What they do is gather products from other places and make something usable. They add value to something that already exists, and that they don't own. This is more like what a record company does than what MS does. And then they add their skills to the mix. So they are selling a sevice also.
To me the article looked like nothing but typical msft hype. Msft floods with pop-media with this cr@p.
I would have been interested to know *specifically* what problems Germany is having with Linux. I have no doubt that a move like that would be difficult. Vendor lock-in is what msft is all about, and msft is very good at it, has been for 20 years.
Are Germany's problems related to not being able to run msft apps? Or is it difficult for users to learn linux? Or is linux more difficult to administrate? Or something else?
This article gives a few more details: http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,622 36,00.html
Should have used FreeBSD on the servers and MacOSX on the desktop. Yair yair - redundent flamebait.
Balmer and Microsoft have always been two sources that I look to for truth! *laugh*. Nice Troll.. sorry noone but I took the bait.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= - The Celtic - =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Perhaps they're stuck with some from-a-box commercial Linux distro that is not as great after you've taken it home and used it for a while as it seemed in the store you bought it from? Perhaps the costs could be lowered by choosing a non-commercial Linux distribution; spending some money instead on hiring competent and productive administrators who are capable of joining and fruitfully contributing to the Debian Maintainer community.
With Debian, debconf, and something like FAI, they could perform huge numbers of customized and preconfigured (not merely "kickstarted", but preconfigured) installs all at once. And by using ideas from http://www.infrastructures.org/ and "Apt", it may be possible to maintain them with less work than it would take given any commercial distro. If it was my choice, I'd certainly choose Debian, since the Debian toolset and community support make adminstration tasks so much easier.
Of course it will require well trained full time staff to keep it all functioning. Perhaps that requirement for a Computer Science degree will turn out not to be superfluous after all!
(So did Mr. Stallman ever get to actually FIX that printer?)
With a little planning and creativity, we normally find ways of doing things that are different and better than the "traditional" MS model. And, they work on all systems we use. By writing code in Java, Perl, Python, et al, and using Web browsers for most of the interface, we are able to push products out that work with any platform.
For products that need something a little more direct or snappier than what a web browser can provide, there are a few good tools for building cross platform GUIs, or there is X. Hummingbird provides a good commercial X server for MS OSs, and there are other less expensive ones (as well as free). Of course, one of my personal favorites has been the good old fashioned text interface on a ssh connection. It is fast, and when done right as easy to use as a most GUIs. Not to mention, the user can type ahead. We still have not figured out how to make click ahead work ;-)
By planning ahead, and taking a 6 to 12 month preparation cycle in which we build apps that are cross platform before we cross the platform, the crossovers go without a hitch. True, in product costs, there are more dollars spent, but in the manpower dollars, where most of the cost is, there are far fewer dollars spent. Overall, the client saves money on product, saves money on installation, saves money on training, saves money on upkeep and saves money on future development. Not a bad tradeoff for 6 to 12 months of up front preperation work.
InnerWeb
Freud might say that Intelligent Design is religion's ID.
Ballmer, recognizing that virus-infected home PCs pose a risk to business users, said the company is studying how consumers can get software patches automatically when flaws are detected in Microsoft software.
Am I the only one worried about microsoft being able to automatically patch your software?
If say, a patch improved WMP, would it be considered an upgrade?
From the EULA:
2. UPGRADES. To use a Product identified as an upgrade, you must first be licensed for the product identified by Microsoft as eligible for the upgrade. After upgrading, you may no longer use the product that formed the basis for your upgrade eligibility.
Would this mean that once something is auto-patched, old versions couldn't be used? I can think of lots of diabolical uses for this, but I'm just paranoid.
Could Microsoft actually do the above?
*puts on tinfoil hat*
I'm a network admin and i'm platform agnostic. We use all types here; my job is to make them work.
So you image 14000 windows computers and you forget to install an application. Using group profiles you can remotely deploy that application the next time your users login.
Company bookmarks change? No problem, just use group profiles to update everyone's favorites next time they login.
Security patch update? Easy, after you've lab tested the patch, go to your Software Update Services machine and automatically deploy the update to all your client machines.
Love or hate MS. They have done a very good job integrating the server products to the desktop products. It helps administrators do their job without making a visit to every workstation, or writing and debugging pages of scripts.
I like OS X and Linux, and I use them every day, but MS seems to do a better job of centralized administration and deployment.
-ted
What are the problems they are having and why haven't we seen reqeusts for help?
is why anyone would accept this piece at face value. Notice that it doesn't link any sources. Are there any? Not as far as I can tell. I've trolled the german IT news sites (I read german) and I haven't found anything that smacks remotely of the claims the article makes.
The only actual quote in the article is from Balmmer: "They're saying it's more expensive" and he goes on to gush: "All of a sudden it's more expensive now to use the Linux solution than the Windows solution." I seriously doubt that any evidence of this can be found in the German press. I certainly can't find any. I also asked my German friends in IT if they had heard of anything. No they hadn't. If there is no evidence, then Ballmer is a bare-faced liar.
What I suspect we have here is simply Ballmer cackling over the results of a FUD piece that he had planted in the first place. If so, it's nothing new, it's the level of ethics we've come to expect from Microsoft.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
i'd like to see your plan for mixing autocad and linux. i'll be working in a municipal environment where autocad is 75% of the workload. said municipal department is having a tremendous virus problem, as well as money shortages. have you had any success with autocad / vmware / wine? post a link?
...what will happen when the rest of us go to work in a couple of years and find all our work computers have been "upgraded" to Longhorn?
The presumption that an upgrade in Windows does not require retraining is stupid. MS changes as much old functionality for change's sake (same functionality, but maybe menu name/location changed or functionalyt "improved" with more obfuscation on top of it) as they add arguably new functionality, and they call it all "new innovation".
Might be nice if the community could help them out. www.muenchen.de for info: http://www.muenchen.de/Rathaus/lhm_alt/mde/aktuell /39405/ms_linux.html
clams
Now I'm talking about both linux and windows based free software.
I had a deadline, one day's work on a Word document I had been emailed. OpenOffice 1.0 which I had faithfully installed would crash on opening it. Now I wanted to upgrade but it would take days and money to download 80MB for OOo1.1 on my 64Kbps. So, I installed OpenOffice 1.1 on my VPS halfway around the world and tried over X (ouch,laggy) I was able to open it but it was too laggy.
Maybe I would have given up sooner if I had not had a remote resource to try the next version, but I had put OO1.0 on my Win98 laptop and waited impatiently for the next localized version.
What was wrong with 1.0? Well, everyone was waxing romantic about OOo but I could NEVER get satisfactory Japanese printing from it just for one example. And it seldom took advantage of the printer drivers that worked fine for other Windows apps. MS Word outlines had the leading symbol turned into an S mark. Also it would wreck MS Word generated documents with tables, like a resume which has the sections divided into boxes. To the point that I wasn't sure if saving as Word would produce something readable by my colleagues, and how could I check with out loading up Word? Oh and I forgot to mention that the HTML Editor while the idea is great, totally sucks in 1.0 (haven't tried 1.1 yet) as it is completely unintuitive, you spend ages adjusting lines manually in hopes it will work out, the raw HTML editor is inconsistent, constantly overwritten by the GUI editor and only understands a limited number of metaphors, and always tries to reinterpret your HTML to 'clean it up'. There is no way on earth that these functions would have ever been released by a professional development company and called production ready by anyone, yet I battled at trying to learn the buggy interface even so.
So I spent half a day unpacking a WinNT machine where I was suddenly able to do high speed work and even download a dictionary program to skip using the ISDN - this is on an old 128MB/1 GB machine. I did have trouble finding my old account (it was an NT logon so now I am Unknown User) so did this job as Administrator. But except for time posting on /., I am on schedule. Knowing it would work on linux OOo1.1 was not enough since there was no way to upgrade over low-bandwidth for my own linux machine.
Now this is just one tiny idioscyncratic example. But also having run Suse and RH on my Inspiron 128MB laptop for some years, I believe modern use of linux highly depends on high bandwidth, a good deal of memory, and in general as little interaction with the Windows world as possible. Each interaction can probably be solved for time and money, spent once and then the problem is solved.
OOo in general seems to work but to tell you the truth it seems they intentionally tried to make it different from Windows and it would have been better to just make a clone I think. Or some kind of learning transition for users who just want to start working.
I also was using Gimp the other day on same heroic Win98 machine. Win Gimp is old. But between my Linux Gimp experience and the wonderful online manual (which I did not want to read however) I solved the problem and figured out how to do alpha masking to make a logo for a new website. To me the Gimp interface compared to Photoshop sucks, it takes much longer to do things and there is not as much visual integration with docking pallettes that help you do things half automatically, whereas with Gimp it's half-done contextual menu idea always has you searching a single menu tree, until you break parts of it off every time.
So in addition to needing large cpu and ram to run a satisfactory desktop gui )I am thinking kde but maybe less so for gnome) and large bandwidth (or periodic cds) I thi
The point is that, if anything, this is a far simpler project than migrating 14000 desktops to Linux. Large projects tend to overrun especially Government ones on whatever scale. Munich's is still within realistic expectations.
and keep paying your drug dealer money, because the withdrawl pains from getting rid of your drug habit is so difficult to go through...
Now let's not discuss any long-term benefits associated with kicking your drug habit. Who cares about 5 years, 10 years, 25 years from now.
Just keep doing crack and be happy - and die sooner.
And your drug dealer keeps laughing as he takes your money.
Great to see that MS is implementing administration ideas that have been used since I care to remember in the UNIX and Mcintosh world.
When was networking introduced to MS OSes?
Yeah, hurrah to innovation.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
OSS sucks because after investing a minimal amount of time on learning it it does not work as the application I have used for months or years.
Yeah, give me a brake.
No software is intuitive or user firendly. The best testament to that is the palafernalia of books and courses that aim to help Windows users, the supposedly user friendly environment.
But that is not the fault of the different software manufacturers, they can't change human nature even if they intended too, who should be blamed for this search of the holly grail of usability are people that claim one solution is best than other when in reality what is happening is that people are showing they are reluctant to learn new tricks or learn new ways.
The Gimp interface is not perfect, has its ideosyncratics, but ther is absolutely no objective way which UI is better than other.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
We have been hearing this nonsense since Linux was not more than a toy OS.
Around the time I began to use Linux in a professional commercial environment (1996) the "specialized" press was speculating how long would it be before Windows NT was going to make UNIX obsolete.
Now, OSS is the backbone of the Internet, small and medium sized companies don't blink an eyelid if offered backoffice solution based in OSS and big companies (banks, oil companies, the two I am aware of) have big chunks of their IT infrastrucutre based on OSS.
But 9 years ago all the nay sayers where not even considering the posssibility that the toy OS, that the software wants to be free philosophy, would be a major factor in the IT industry.
OSS is playing catchup? If you say so so be it, I have not used anything but OSS software at home for the last 6 years, and when I compare my computing experience with what happens in the office (the occasions I have been forced to deal with Windows) I frankly don't miss anything. Viruses, freezes, reboots, vulnerabilities, clunky user interfaces that are no configurable, lack of powerful automatization tools.
No thanks, I prefer to continue "catching up", it feel pretty good to be so "backwards".
Sure, give me a brake.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
... because if Microsoft ever decides to make products for Linux, OSS will find itself relegated to the backwaters again. If a market develops that is large enough (because of all these cities switching to Linux) MS will be in like a dirty shirt ... and since they know how to design GUI's (if not software) and address the needs of common users (however misguided), it will be all up with OSS hopes of breaking the MS stranglehold.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
I guess I was impressed by how clearly they explained the technical details, for those of us who don't have the vocabularly to begin with. In the future I won't be so wary of O'Reilly books!
I keep hearing lots of good things about Debian. Perhaps when I have time to reconfigure things I'll make the switch to Debian. I agree with your point about out-of-the-box installs. I've avoided installing any new software to the SuSE machines, whereas with Windows machines I'm an installing fool! I'm definitely going to keep my eye on Debian and Debian-based distros in the future
Almost every single *nix crapware program I've seen was written by former Windows "programmers". I guess windows affects every part of the brain...
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
with nothing to back up his claims.
Usual - no story here move along - journalism.
Where's a coroboration of Balmers's claims?
I think the article must have been written by a certain Mr Gilligan ex-of-BBC:-)
They are having "trouble" installing linux in Munich because it is more expensive? What is more expensive? What is the "trouble"?
Oh!...The last time the installed, they had to install via floppies and they had to upgrade the systems with CD or DVD readers? Is that the source of the "expense"...?
The news article is not very "enlightening"...probably even sourced by MS as press fodder. I mean, what is the "trouble"? You can copy one image to the network, then use autoinstall to setup 100's of PC's. Now that is all included in my one copy of $100 SuSE. I cannot even buy one copy of Windows for use in a network for that, let alone be provided with autoinstall SW.
The article feels more like FUD than substance...does anyone know what part of the upgrade cost / workstation is costing more?
Besides, why don't these cities just setup the conversion as an open-source project on source-forge -- they could likely get all the software conversion done for near free and hire someone locally to maintain it? What, exactly, does a city need in a distro to "run itself?" If multi-cities are converting over, why not just develop an open-source city-distro. Seems like a specialized class of SuSE's...it or Mandrake has the best multi-lang support. Red Hat seems aimed at commercial, but why not have cities turn to its citizens, or citizens of the net to develop a "by-the-people" software distro?
What software do you want to run your government tomorrow? Perhaps these cities are used to operating in a close environment. But why not have an open process development to develop a distro to run a city? The citizens themselves could make sure it's secure before handing over the "keys" to the mayor (so to speak).
It seems like the problem might be not using open source processes to develop and deploy the solution(s). It seems there is a need to buy the distro from a retailer or from the manufacturer, and have something ready off-the-shelf or made for them.
But such customization would be necessary on MS software -- and would *have* to be proprietary, since not everyone has the source to all the pieces used and such customization could likely only be done on site or by a closed group. However, with open source SW, such customization doesn't have to be done by traditional closed-source methods. If fact, it's better done via open-source methods and the cities to form, create and become part of the open source community to make sure they are on top of fixes as they come out. Otherwise, you can have the same problems of "unupdated" SW as MS has. One of the positive aspects of the open-source system is that SW fixes, even fixes in customized software, can be done rapidly and deployed just as rapidly.
With MS, security and customization of OS components can only come from closed source and closed development sources: often contracts with the one closed source vendor, MS.
Perhaps the cost and problem with conversion to an open source base for running a city government is that they are running the project as they would a closed source project. I wonder if anyone in the Munich government even knows what Slashdot is, let alone reads it or if someone there in their IS department is up to date on the LKML action or any of the distro support groups?
Anyway...given the lack of details in the original article almost implies that they are treating open-source exactly as they would closed-source and have no process for doing an open-source project.
-l
Now you all say that linux is free right. You don't have to pay for upgrades. Well look at how long you get support for it. Redhat's free version of linux the support was being dwindled down to 1 year. Take a look at MS's support cycle. Up to 7 years for updates/patches. If you want that same thing with linux, well of course you'll have to pay for it.
My Gawd WTF...