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Munich Votes for Linux Migration Plan
JoScherl writes "The German news site Heise reports (German, Babelfish version) that the city council of Munich (3rd biggest city in Germany, 1.3 million inhabitants) has voted for the detailed concept of the LiMux - Linux for Munich (German, Babelfish version) project with votes from all parties except the CSU (Christlich Soziale Union, christion social union). With this decision the 13,000 Desktops and Servers of the city administration will be migrated to Linux. CSU, which has just won the European elections, said they won't support Linux since its Feierabendprogrammierer ('leisure-time coders') would destroy Munich's IT-landscape (Microsoft Germany and other big companies are located in and around Munich) and they also fear that the personnel would have problems with learning how to use OpenOffice and other migrated systems. The migration plan has the following steps: This year the Windows NT desktops get OpenOffice and Mozilla as their default office and browsing suite. In 2005 and 2006 the systems will be migrated to Linux, with some applications running on Windows application servers. In 2008 all applications should run native on Linux."
babelfish's tranlation sucks
/c't)
google seems to do a better tranlation
Resident of Munich town councillor segnet concept for Linux migration off
30 million euro the expensive project LiMux can start: The town councillor Muenchen adopted the stage plan on today's Wednesday for the conversion of the entire computer landscape for those approximately 16,000 coworkers of the city administration officially. For the Linux migration tuned the red-green coalition governing in the city hall together with representatives of FDP, OEDP and the Party of Democratic Socialism. Alone the CSU governing in Bavaria votierte against the introduction of the penguin into the offices. Conservative politicians expressed doubts that the "end of workday programmers" would destroy the IT economy of Munich from the open SOURCE corner. They were afraid also risks for the persons employed, who must learn now above all handling a new text processing. Announcement
With LiMux the migration of approximately 13,000 Desktop computers and the pertinent servers lines up. First the project responsible persons in the city hall want to select concrete open SOURCE products in the framework of bidding procedures. IBM and the Novell daughter Suse are not only to come to the course, even if the original LiMux Design of the two sizes comes in the Linux market. One of the main goals of the migration is it however to create jobs directly in the residents of Munich IT economy and to receive a competitive market. "we must now watch out that we some monopolist loose will want by we the next global giant to use up", explained themselves the green town councillor Jens Muehlhaus already first under allusion on Microsoft and Big Blue. It wants to bring the small and medium-size IT companies into and around Munich particularly with the necessary specialized technical and special solutions in the play. Opposite heise on-line regretted Muehlhaus the decision of the CSU, which did not understand yet that at free software money is made main with services.
In detail the migration is to take place in three steps: First in this year all computers in the administration, which run so far still on Windows NT, are equipped with open Office and Mozilla as Browser. "first the transformation lines up to that approximately 7000 Office macros for forms such as vacation requests or travel expenses accounts, which can be finally centralized thereby ", are pleased Muehlhaus. 2005 and 2006 go it then to the migration of all office PCS to the new operating system Linux, which is to finally work completely with free software. Until 2008 then the difficult adjustment of specialized's applications lines up, for which according to Muehlhaus creativity and a good co-operation between the administration and open SOURCE developers are necessary. The know-how developed thereby might be internationally in demand however and "also exported themselves and sell to let", is safe itself of Muehlhaus.
The migration motivation is not only to be reported for this reason with the coworkers concerned in the meantime again risen, white the green town councillor. In January from individual city hall departments warning voices had to be heard that the problems with the conversion could grow the residents of Munich over the head. "in the meantime we have the full support for LiMux", get straight Muehlhaus. All involved ones would regard the project as feasible and meaningfully. The timetable for the Green has a who courage drop still: The residents of Munich schools are to be reequipped only in two years on Linux, so that the training grow up up to then still with the Windows world. Microsoft offers very cheap licenses for the education sector "on". There it falls heavily, which political will for rapid migration to bundle ( Stefan Krempl )/( jk
There are plenty of grass-roots non-profit christian groups using free open source stuff. The CSU are not the best example of christianity.
You make the mistake of thinking you can educate the fundamental stupidity out of people. You can't.
CSU, which has just won the European elections[...]
sorry, but that's wrong. the party-system in germany is transparent and clear, except for the cdu (christian democratic union) / csu issue. the cdu is a big german party and the csu is a pure bavarian party. and in bavaria there is no cdu. but when it comes to nationwide elections these two parties run as one. they have different programms and different campaigns, but you can only vote for cdu/csu.
it is a major flaw in germany's democratic system bacause one can't elect one party without electing the other. the reason for this (there maybe are historical reasons, but that's no excuse): both parties are very conservative, but bavaria is an ultraconservative state (the csu gets always around 50-60% in bavaria) and so there is an ultraconservative christian union especially for them and no one else.
btw, i don't even understand why there are religious parties in a democracy.
beer as in "free beer"
If you'd been reading lwn.net you would have already noticed their link to a Bloomberg article, written in english, which covers this.
CSU is simply the Bavarian equivalent of CDU, the mainline conservative political party in Germany. In reality, it doesn't have that much to do with Christianity at all.
The Christian Social Union really has nothing to do with socialism (as we know it in the American vernacular) or for that matter Christianity at all. It's just the mainline conservative political party in Germany. For example, the main opposition party is the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and they are often refered to as "social democrats". I would even go so far to say that the conservative CSU/CDU is actually more like the US Democrats, while the SPD is somewhere to the left of that even.
In Germany, at least, the term 'socialist' has never really had a negative connotation like in the US. In fact, it seems to be thrown around all over the place like we throw 'democratic' around.
CSU, which has just won the European elections, said they won't support Linux
First of all, the CSU is a political artefact. It only exists in Bavaria and not in all of Germany. It is sort of the Bavarian complement of CDU, which is the nationwide right-wing party and not present in Bavaria.
The party is on the right side (somewhat) of the CDU and of course they believe they are at least as important as the CDU. But in reality they are a small, local party with an inflated sense of importance.
The CSU did not win the European elections. There is no such thing as winning the European elections. The seats in the European parliament are distributed roughly according to the votes each party got. In fact the larger countries have more seats and smaller have less, and the seats per country are distributed accordingly to the vote distribution in that country. But for example, I cannot vote for a German party, since I am Austrian. I have to vote for an Austrian party.
Anyway, by "winning the elections" they mean sort of a moral win. i.e. they got more votes that the parties in power. Since CSU is Bavaria only, it actually means they got more votes in Bavaria than the parties in power in Germany got in Bavaria. On an European scale the CSU has no importance whatsoever. On a German scale they are nuisance-level.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
But not correct in this context. Ich hab es dir gesagt is better. Or to make sound more realistic: Ich hab's dir ja gleich gesagt. If a group (=Microsoft) is supposed to be behind it: Wir haben's euch ja gleich gesagt.
That was just an unfortunate comment by the original poster and the /. editors.
The German polical system in 1 minute:
-There are four main politcal parties in Germany
-The two largest ones (about 30-45% of the vote each) are the SPD (Social Democrats) and the CDU/CSU (Christian Democrats)
-The two smaller national parties are the FDP (Free Democrats) andf the Green Party. Both get between 3-10%, depending on the individual election.
-In the former East Germany, the PDS (Party of Democratic Socialism) a successor to the former socialist party that ran the GDR until reunification is getting about 15-25% of the vote in local and state elections.
-Seats in the Bundestag, the more powerful lower house are awarded by the total number of votes a party gets, as long as they get more than 5% of the total vote, or win three electorial districts outright. So there are usually 4-5 parties in the lower house and they have to form coalitions to get a majority.
-Currently, the majority in the lower house is a coalition of the Social Democrats and the Green Party. The chancellor is a Social Democrat, the foreign secretary and vice chancellor is from the Green Party
-Most state governments are either Christian Democrats or coalitions of the Christian Democrats and Free Democrats.
-Since the members of the upper house are nominated by the state governments, the above also have a majority in the upper house.
-The Social Democrats got basically vaporized by the Christian Democrats in the European elections last week.
-There are some more fringe and single issue parties, but none that has any influence on the state or federal level.
-All of the parties above are well to the left of the US Republican Party, the Christian Democrats are the most conservative, along the lines of the more centrist wing of the US Democrats, the Social Democrats are best compared to the left wing of the US Democtatic Party, the Free Democrats are more free market, which would put them closer to Republican positions, but more liberal socially. The Green Party is a green party, but less nuts than Nader, and the PDS are unabashed socialists.
What does this have to do with this decision in Munich? Nothing whatsoever. This decision was made by the city government, which is domianted by Social Democrats and the Green Party. The Christian Democrats have an overwhelming majority in the Bavarian state government, but it is purely up to the city government what software their employeers use.
CSU did win the EU-elections in Bavaria (Stimmenanteile = votes share), but I wouldn't be surprised at that (I'll explain later). Their friend CDU won 40 out of the 99 seats for Germany in the EU parliament. CDU and CSU are in coalition, as well as SPD and the Greens (Grünen), SPD and the Greens managed to win the national German elections 2 years ago, but this loss in the EU-elections show the public's opinion of the way they are running the country so far.
;-)
The CSU has always been winning in Bavaria, it's a local party to the state. Some also joke it's the national party because "Bavaria is not Germany". This view is also the reason it doesn't get good results everywhere else, who'd want to have a "foreigner" as their chancellor?
What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
Currently not. But that is likely to change at the next national election. The CDU/CSI is likely to win in two years and I doubt very much that the CDU has any more sense when it comes to OSS.
Then again if for instance Siemens would get onto the Linux bandwagon the CSU will probably overcome their reservations pretty quickly.
But given the inertia of German management that may take a long time.
The city of Treuchtlingen (also in Germany and not so far from Munich) with just around 13000 citizens moved their municipality to open source. They also have setup a webiste (unfortunatley in German only) where they give details about what and how they did and how the acceptance of the people that have to live with the solution is. Ok, I guess their project is very much smaller than the one of Munich, but at least it reads like a success story.
Munich's Town Council blesses Concept for Linux Migration
The 30-million-Euro-project LiMux can start: On Wednesday, the town council of Munich has officially agreed to the step-by-step plan for transitioning the entire computer landscape of the about 16,000 workers in the city's administration. The governing red-green coalition, along with representatives from FDP, OeDP, and PDS voted in favour of the migration. The CSU, ruling with absolute majority in Bavaria, voted against the Penguin moving into the offices. Conservative politicians expressed concerns that leisure-time programmers ("Feierabendprogrammierer") from the Open-Source camp would destroy the IT economy of Munich. They feared risks also for the employees, who mainly must learn how to use a new word processor now.
LiMux means the migration of about 13,000 desktop computers and the corresponding servers. Initially, the project leaders in the town council want to make bid invitations to select concrete open source products. Not only IBM and Novell's subsidiary Suse should be involved here, although the original LiMux design was done by those two major players in the Linux market. One of the main goals of the migration is, however, to create jobs right in Munich's IT economy and to maintain a competitive market. "We must be careful now not to get rid of the one monopolist by making ourselves dependent on the next global giant," said green councellor Jens Muehlhaus up front, alluding to Microsoft and Big Blue. He wants to involve the small and medium-sized IT companies in and around Munich, especially for the non-standard programs (Fachanwendungen) and special solutions that are needed. Talking to heise online, Muehlhaus regretted the decision of the CSU, who still hadn't understood that with free software, money is mainly being made through services.