Munich Finally Starts to Embrace Linux

sankyuu writes "After years of rumor and vacillation over fear of patents, the city of Munich has decided to trickle in its first 100 linux terminals. The floodgates are scheduled to fling open by 2008, when 80% of government PCs should be running Linux."

Comments

Re:holy not cost effective, batman!

[ozmanjusri]

They're taking a big one-time hit although.

I wonder how many of the custom apps they're building on Linux will also be open source, and therefore available to the next government looking to switch. It could be that Munich is taking a _really_ big hit, but each organisation which follows the same path will find it progressively easier to switch.

I've often thought that commercial software vendors are taking an immense risk in not porting to Linux, thereby allowing the whole FOSS application stack on the platform to be developed without commercial-grade competition.

This sort of migration could start a cascade effect, where each successful adoption catalyses the next, and there are damn few commercial software houses prepared to take advantage of that.