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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."
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.
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.
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?
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