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."

Comments

Re:$30mil EURO?

[apoc.famine]

At the same time, how many of these office workers ever were trained to use a computer in the first place? Most of the offices I've worked in hired "people with computer experience" - that is, people who could demonstrate the ability to turn on a computer and use a keyboard and mouse. Why? because they didn't need as much training, which saved money. I wonder how much more efficient some real training will make these people.

Outside of switching to linux, I think that actually training workers to use a computer will make more of a difference than an OS switch ever could. Of course, since they are switching to linux, the extra training will only help make the switch seem even better, which is good for everyone but MS.