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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
...of those bargaining things where they are just trying to get a better deal from Microsoft?
Although, I think they'd be better off instead of "babying" the employees so to speak and taking such a long time to migrate. Just do it, give them courses, maybe an hour a day for a couple months. Four years seems like a long time just to convert to something extremely simple.
$30m divided by 13,000 machines = $2300/machine? Is this the reasonable cost companies should budget for to migration from Windows to Linux?
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
Ok Linux is a good OS, but they're about to have to retrain approx 16,000 workers, many of whom never heard of Linux and some are total creampuffs in computers. They will be retraining to a platform the users may not like as well. The long run costs will probably be worth it as upgrades are free. However the short term costs of re-training I shudder to think about. At 16,000 workers they need a whole university's capacity of retraining. In fact any Linux guru looking for a job? Munich sounds like a good bet...
...in bed
Is IBM going to donate the services (as in lots of IT help for free, again) of a large crew of techs to assist in the transition like they did for the earlier part?
I hope those in charge of this migration is honest in reporting how the migration goes. I wouldn't expect the migration to go without some hitches somewhere and I hope it is reported what the glitches are. Of course, expect MS to jump all over the problems and say "I told you so!" but overall I hope Munich becomes the standard bearer for a mass migration to Linux.
Basically they should come out and say hey here is how things went, here are the problems and here is how to avoid them. The moral of the story hopefully will be that any large entity can migrate to Linux and get away from the MS lock-in.
No trees were harmed in the composition of this; however, numerous electrons were inconvenienced.
Linux fans had better hope that this goes well because if it doesn't you can guarantee that Microsoft will be hopping up and down screaming "I told you so".....or "Ich tolden youze sozen" (in German)
"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)."
Trying not to sound to troll-ish, but why was the Christian group the only group to say nay to this? Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, correct? Are they saying they support being locked into an operating system and helping a monopoly? I'd think they would be jumping for this...And hell, the philosiphy behind linux is one of sharing and helping your fellows!
Just a thought...
The Yasashii Syndicate ||
In other news, the CSU passed a law preventing youth groups from spending their leisure time collecting trash in order to prevent huge damage to munich's Trash Collection-landscape.
I'd say a little bit of that goes to the labour cost of upgrading all those machines, and the rest goes to the retraining of staff. Two weeks of professional training could easily cost $2000.
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling
We are bound to get a score of people telling us how staying with windows is easier and how it is the past of least resistance. They also said this about the server a few years ago, although they are quieter on that front now.
What they do not understand is that this was a strategic and long-term move for the city of Munich. When you are creating infrastructure, you care about long-term benefits. In my eyes, the city of Munich is making a serious investment to create a future they can control. No doubt, this is a political move, but it is one that highsight will reveal as path-breaking, as in, breaking the path-dependence of Windows.
Finally, I have moved a bunch of small non-profits to Linux, and all these alleged retraining costs are not there, even for the computer challenged. Real computer novices can get to work after an hourly week of training. Those that have used a computer before can do so almost immediately, with the occasional question posted on the site's intranet and quickly answered by yours truly.
Come on, guys, if we are to bring on the Linux desktop, we need to dispell the myth that it is hard to use. Suse 9.1 or Mandrake 10 are a freaking joy to use.
Pragmatism as an ideology is not particularly pragmatic in the long term. Keep it in mind when you dismiss Free Software
The US is a foreign country.
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
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.
Although your post was obviously tongue-in-cheek, it is not far from the truth. Apparently in Germany, they are petrified of the Church of Scientology. So much so that they demanded Microsoft provide them with instructions to remove "Disk Defragmenter" , because it was developed by a company whose CEO was a scientologist.
Slashdot's US-centricism is showing...
Basically, the Chrsitian Socialists Union in Bavaria or Christian Democratic Union as it is known in the rest of Germany is the "Conservative" party of German politics. It's the big conservative party, so I guess for Americans it's the equivalent of the Republican Party. Helmut Kohl, practically Chancellor for life there for about 15 years, was from the CDU/CSU.
Politically active Christians in the USA would find the CDU/CSU's positions on many issues abhorrent; the Christian label is just an historical anachronism from what I could tell during my two years in Germany.
Gerhardt Schroeder, the current Chancellor, is from the major "liberal" opposition party- I forget the name now. For what it is worth, West Germany only had one Chancellor in the postwar era from the opposition party. All the rest were CDU/CSU until the "wiedervereinigung".
In principio erat Verbum.
This is going to be interesting to follow. The biggest problem will probably be the users that Do Not Want Change. There's always some of these, and they'll raise a stink about it. Hopefully, things will go mostly smoothly such that not to many No Opinion Either Way-people are swayed by their bickering.
I hope that IBM/Novell/SuSe provide some easy and well documented way (should be in the training "If you have a problem, don't mumble, speak up and we'll fix it!") for the users to send in bug reports. That and some developers/funds dedicated to fixing those precise problems could dramatically improve OpenOffice.org and the other applications they're switching to. That way, the users will see "Hey, we can actally influence this!" and the software projects will move forward, regardless of how the switch project ultimately ends.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
This is good to hear, I think. They're going slow so users get used to the new stuff (not that word processing on OpenOffice or browsing on Mozilla is all that different from MS stuff), and will eventually do a complete OSS converstion (yeah, I guess I just restated the article...). What does sound interesting is the part about specialty software, and how that will probably end up as open source. I'm curious as to what will come out of that.
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"
This is true about public infrastructure. If a city tore out and repoured its sidewalks every three years, the citizens would be up in arms about such a waste of money. But with computering infrastructure, this is just accepted. Even projects funded by entities such as the WPA, which were intended to generate employment, were built to last. Many of the sidewalks in my town still have the letters WPA cast into the concrete. In fact, the Munich Linux installation may become one of those seemingly permanent pieces of public infrastructure that future generations will marvel at for its solid construction and longevity.
Great Accomplishments in Civil Engineering:
1. Hoover Dam
2. Roman Aqueducts
3. Brooklyn Bridge
4. Munich Linux installation
Unknown host pong.
If you'd been reading lwn.net you would have already noticed their link to a Bloomberg article, written in english, which covers this.
From the post, it's hard to tell...
With this decision the 13,000 Desktops and Servers of the city administration will be migrated to Linux.
and then
CSU, which has just won the European elections, said they won't support Linux
So, which is it? Can someone who knows the political landscape explain? Much appreciated.
That's funny because, for Republicans in the US, the 'conservative' label is also just a historical anachronism.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
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.
There are always little apps that you didn't know about and no one else has heard of, except for the one guy in Accounting who absolutely needs it to run payroll every month.
Sure it's okay if you migrate it. But it has to work exactly as the current one does. Same input, same output, same format.
And it's a mess of spaghetti code from 20 years and 50 programmers. All undocumented.
And he needs a specific boot disk to make it work.
Moving 95% of the apps for 95% of the people is easy.
It's those one-of-a-kind yet mission-critical apps that take so long and cost so much that your project over runs on cost and time.
I just spent 2 whole days moving ONE user's workstation from NT to Win2K and it was practically perfect...... except ONE thing she prints doesn't print the same way now.
And THAT is the thing that will be remembered.
Do you mean Microsoft Deutschland Gmbh losing out to IBM Deutschland?
It sounds as if they're going from a Wintel fat-client/server architecture to a Lintel fat-client/server architecture. Whether or not you agree with me that this is a dubious decision, consider that deploying a true multiuser operating system in effectively single-user mode is a lot like deploying chainsaws to a bunch of chimpanzees.
In my experience *nix's strengths become apparent when you use it as it was meant to be used: a lot of terminals plus maybe a few high-powered standalone workstations. For many standalone machines it's no less of a headache than Windows and in some ways more of one.
I know, I know, thin-clients never took off, yadda-yadda. But I maintain that the biggest part of why they haven't is that deploying Office this way is prohibitively expensive. If you're moving to OO.o, it starts to look a lot better.
(One nice thing about a Linux thin-client setup is that legacy Windows machines can act as terminals with Cygwin/X, allowing Windows and Linux apps as to be deployed in parallel.)
Google confirms: Ruby is the world's most beloved programm
You missed the most important fact -- computers (hardware and software) age exponentially faster than the physical counterparts you compare them to. Sidewalks are always useful, so long as they're in good repair. Sure, you may occasionally need to widen a walk to handle more human bandwidth, but in general you could pour some concrete for sidewalks and then leave it alone for decades (but for a periodic cleaning and weeding), and never have a problem.
Try doing the same thing with computers. Go ahead, get some ancient computing hardware from the 70s, 80s, or even early 90s. Install the ancient software. Now try to use that effectively in a technologically-advancing world. Oops! You can't! At least, not as user desktops and such, if you want to keep productive and happy users.
Now let's flip it around. What you're suggesting already exists. How often did you hear about banks and financial institutions using 20-30+ year old software because it still worked during the lead up and fizzle of the whole Y2K crap? And what did those institutions do when a serious threat came around? They started hiring people to fix the current software (patch the sidewalk). Very few chose to upgrade their systems instead (rip up the sidewalk and repave).
This is one time where it would have been a good idea to not RTFA.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
OK, but as long as they use the word socialist, we can push people's buttons over here with that. The ones who knee jerk on the word socialist will assume they are "radical marxists", or even worse, "liberals". Heck, we've even got the word "union" in there too, how pinko can you get?
Tell some other people the party is on the right, and we can mention in passing another right wing German bunch that used the word socialist in their name too.
With the right spin, this is a gold mine of good publicity for Linux. Can I use that quote about the abhorrent positions? What's the biggest thing the CSU supports that most Politically Active Christians over here will find abhorent? Forced Bussing of Christian baby seals to live with Agnostic Baby Orcas? Manditory 100% taxation on all profits from the sale of propane and propane accessories? We don't need the things many over here would find "reasonable" mind you, if they've supported the US in Iraq or something leave that out.
Who is John Cabal?
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.
Switching from Office 97 (what everybody really uses) to Office 200x is as traumatic as switching to OpenOffice. As Microsoft points out, OpenOffice is comparable to Office 97. And Office 97 is about as good as Office ever got. Beyond that, it's tons of features you don't need, and integration with stuff you don't want to integrate with.
"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."
Sounds a little too much like "direct from Redmond" FUD doesn't it? Let's hope these Microsoft shills don't have the power to sabotage the whole thing. We can expect Microsoft to try to buy politicians in Germany just like they have in the US. At any rate I would suggest that the government of Munich be prepared for Microsoft's interference.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
I will take you up on that bet. I will even tell you that none of those four applications: e-mail, browsing, word processing, and spreadsheets are enough to place a computer on a municipal employee's desk. The government killer app varies by department. But each department most likely has a client server application related to providing city services: Water billing, tax collection, property records, etc. None of these would need the above mentioned 4 apps.
The overall IT scenario is a mix of Telnet/Terminal emulation, Windows desktop apps (VB/VC++/FoxPro/Office VBA), Intranet applications, DOS (yea really!) apps, and maybe even some desktop java. Can you migrate most of these to _Insert OS Distribution Here_? Sure, Why not. That is your decision. However, some groups are going to have a specific piece of commercial software that just will not convert easily or work with VMWare, WINE, or your emulator of choice.
Have you Meta Moderated t
"social" in Christian Social union is like
The social in social security referring to
society.
Spoken like a person who has never used Word for anything except writing a college paper. I prefer Open Office to MS Office, and I think that there are plent of problems for MS Office. But saying Office 97 is better than the more recent versions is delusional at best.
Come on, guys, if we are to bring on the Linux desktop, we need to dispell the myth that it [Linux] is hard to use.
Not entirely myth.
You are entirely correct in that much of what normal users need and want to do is in fact quite easy with Linux, often easier than with Microsoft.
The thing is that the optimum level of use with Linux is substantially higher than that of Microsoft, like comparing vi with pico. Linux is harder in that it's worthwhile learning to do stuff that isn't worthwhile learning with Microsoft.
With Microsoft Word I tell my users to just slop something in. It will come out looking halfway presentable. Do not, ever, care much about how it looks. If you care about what it looks like you are fighting something bigger than you are and it will have its own way.
With Linux and Open/Star Office I would expect better, meaning that there's stuff that's worth learning.
As recently announced on Computer Business Review Novell is planning on releasing this summer the first desktop product since they bought Ximian and Suse. Waiting for this OS, that will combine several key client/server pieces (eg Evolution/Exchange), will be of great benefit to Munich. It will also be of great benefit to the rest of the world since Munich will be a great testing ground :-) (all software is in constant beta). Since Novell is positioning this as a 'Business Desktop' I expect that it will have excellent integration with Windows, Exchange, NetWare, and GroupWise servers. Certainly something to wait for when converting an entire infrastructure. Since Novell/Suse were involved in the pitch to the city of Munich I expect that the migration strategy, and the decision to migrate, were based heavily on the future plans that Novell/Suse/Ximian have for bringing OSS to the business world. Note the mention of 'contribution to OpenOffice.org' in the above article. BTW, anyone know what email server the city currently uses? Or anything other details about their network (file servers, print servers, application servers, etc.)?
Haven't seen an office yet where almost everyone doesn't run at least some sort of custom app.
- A zillion Excel spreadsheet macros to be converted to OOo
Whatever their payroll system is.
- Custom reporting in Access out of the Oracle/SQLServer backend needs to be rebuilt
- The city engineers need some new CAD package to manage the sewer sytem. Oh, and all those existing files may need to be converted.
- All of their current Word/Powerpoint files need to be bumped against OOo for compatibility. It's not quite as seamless at it appears.
- All of their current development tools
Converting the one machine in your living room is one thing. Switching a whole business/city is quite another.
The worst part is that I actually voted for these baffoons.
Now, why would you do such a thing?
Anyway, for good measure I think to imply that the CSU is to the right of Bush is rather exaggerated. I certainly can not stand Stoiber, but at least he seems to have some brains. The CSU has also by far not such a catastrophic track record in environmental issues as Bush. His administration has been working hard on undoing every environmental safe-guard in the USA since it took over. For instance: I can not recall any CSU politician denying the existence of global warming.
> 1,000 Euro will get you a name brand PC with monitor and MS operating system and > Office licenses.
But that does not include installation, administration and infrastructure costs.
> You have to really build up a lot of hatred for a vendor to consider paying
> maybe 14,000,000 Euro over the top to oust said vendor
Certainly you're right, and some people hate MS, but from where I'm standing, most people just hate depending on one thing and paying out the nose for it when they KNOW there are better alternatives. Ask any avid linux user who admins both platforms - if he's worth his salt, he'll tell you that eliminating Microsoft at any cost is not practical or even desirable - but allowing better alternatives in, where they exist, is crucial to saving time, money and aggravation.
Also, you're not considering that those 14,000,000 extra Euro are seen as an investment for long term savings. Corporate licensing for MS is even worse then retail. At least you know in the short run what you're paying for and OTS application - the corporate licensing schemes have totally arbitrary terms (despite what is advertised on the MS site) and have you chasing your tail trying to figure out what you're entitled to. Forget explaining it to a CFO once you've got it nailed down. Then the whole paradigm changes with the next wave of releases. When using mostly free software, you have relative certainty in the form of more-or-less predictable labor and hardware costs - planning is much easier, a little less air needs to be added to the budget, and you have a better chance of staying within budget.
I'm personally counting on this to pressure MS and other big software vendors to either drop prices or increase quality, as well as provide me with the odd chance to roll out something that works instead of dealing with certain packages I know are not worth trying to support.
I think it's turned out OK in cases where MS has been forced to compete. IE was free and improved for a while (at least until they had a dominant lead, IE6+ has been a nightmare) and Exchange got better by version 5 in order to compete with Lotus on the groupware front and sendmail on the MTA front... meanwhile, MS cut server package deals that basically gave it away. Their OS has gotten a bit more stable, probably in response to the perception of Linux kernel as being rock-solid. Maybe MS Office or Citrix will get cheaper faced with the prospect of Linux desktops running centrally-managed open source office productivity software over X.
Bergen is also going over to Linux (article in Norwegian)
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
Factor in the costs of getting locked-in to a single software technology provider. Then you must use Word, Excel, whatever. Factor in the costs of non-interoperability of your files for future revisions of the software. And I mean like on the scale of 30 years. Factor in the cost of lost man-hours due to the Worm of the Day. Factor in the cost of lost man-hours due to viruses. Factor in the cost of constantly rebooting the machines. Factor in the cost of system administration for Windows. Etc. Etc.
There are so many hidden costs when dealing with Microsoft.
Besides, why should Munich buy from Microsoft, when there's a better alternative?
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.
The answer is, the government will spend that money on something else, or (better) leave it with taxpayers so they can spend it on something else. The money will then flow to other jobs, in businesses and industries that are more competitive, where the government should be encouraging capital concentration and job growth.
That answer goes to software publishers, fruit farmers, coal miners, steel makers, missile manufacturers, and any other interest that thinks it should be paid, not for the value of its goods or services, but because such a fat pig is entitled to its place at the public trough. Off to slaughter, piggies!
or a tremendous PR disaster. If they fail, you can bet your ass MSFT will not get tired pointing this out. If they succeed, Novel/IBM/RHAT and everyone else will be touting the precedent.
If you view the migration away from MS-Windows to anything else to be inevitable, then the migration costs should be largely accounted as removing-MS-Windows costs rather than buying-Linux costs. In which case Linux costs an awful lot less than MS-Windows.
You also have to figure in the ongoing cost of maintenance, along with a number of so-called "extraordinary" items like cleaning up after the next CodeRed or MSBlast hits you. Linux is extremely unlikely to ever raise such costs.
But the big reason is that Germany really, really hates being run by foreigners, particularly Americans (but they have other pet peeves too), in any way.
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
Did anyone notice that first they are going to make the users run some of the open source apps on their windows?
Then the change won't be so huge, when they switch from Windows to Linux. All of their apps will still be right there. The browser and mail-client being the most important.
Some people get angry that good open source apps are being ported to windows, but really: It's the best(only?) way to do it.
It's must easier to switch if you can take all your base^H^H^H^H apps with you.
-- Make software not war
These folks make Bush look semi liberal!
Hrm, increased spending, expanding social security, compassionate conservatism. While The man is a moral conservative, he's got quite the libreal spending streak.
Yes in the grand scheme of things he's quite conservative. However, you want to talk true blue conservative, use an example like McCain or Regan.
--- Justin Dearing http://www.justaprogrammer.net/ We're just programmers.
Apparently in Germany, they are petrified of the Church of Scientology.
That's a misrepresentation. In day-to-day business nobody cares about Scientology here.
So much so that they demanded Microsoft provide them with instructions to remove "Disk Defragmenter", because it was developed by a company whose CEO was a scientologist.
The logic behind this decision is quite simple. Scientology applied to be recognized as religion in Germany and was put down, because it didn't met the requirements the law sets forth for acknowledging a religion. Scientology didn't like that and there was quite some fuss afterwards.
Overall, soon afterwards it's been officially considered a cult, IIRC. Not only by the law, but also by a lot of independend observers.
Now, with that presumption, that Scientology is a cult -- some of their (alleged) questionable goals known -- that has shown open hostility against the current legal system. If you take that as given, it's quite sound for a government to look for software other than one which (allegedly) has known influence of Scientology.
Keep an eye on which arguments are silently dropped in replies. Not always, but often times it's very telling.
There were actually two chancellors from the SPD: Willy Brandt and Helmut Schmidt.
don't forget, significant part of these 13M will stay in germany, may help to create new jobs there, etc ...
so paying 7M for windows can be more expensive (for germany at least) than paying 13M for linux
OK, but as long as they use the word socialist,...
They don't, that's simply a wrong translation. Their name is "Christlich-soziale Union", which means "Christian Social Union". "Christian Socialist Union" would translate to "Christlich Sozialistische Union". There is a big difference between "social" and "socialist". "Social" sounds positive, basically every political party in Germany would like to claim that they make social (=something like fair and balanced) politics. The governing party in Germany is called the Social-Democratic Party of Germany (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschland, SPD). There is only one party (at least from the well known parties) that carries "socialistic" in their name, the PDS (Partei des demokratischen Sozialismus, Party of the democratic socialism), which is the successor of the former East German communists. They are basically the political antipode to the CSU.
The Munich migration is a part of an EU-funded umbrella scheme called COSPA (Consortium for Open Source in Public Administration) -- http://www.cospa-project.org -- for assisting and monitoring migration of public bodies to FLOSS and ODS. (Another such migration that has made some progress is a large hospital in Dublin, Beaumont Hospital -- although their main web server still seems to be ASP.) See COSPA's web site for a fuller list. (It will later have a knowledge-base for sharing tips and experiences of switching to FLOSS in this context.)
Netcraft confirms!
that a larger project in Extremadura, Spain, doesn't get this kind of attention (Some background for the spanish-impaired). It's already working (I thinks it's a little over two years now), it's been distributed to hundreds of thousands (including every desktop in the schools, one computer for every two students, mind you)... it even has inspired at least one already working project in Andalucía, Spain (and seeds of several others, as in Madrid, Zaragoza or Valencia; it seems all education in Spain is migrating to linux in the next few years).
My journal. Mainly about freedom.