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The State of Munich's Ongoing Linux Migration
christian.einfeldt writes "The Munich decision to move its 14,000 desktops to Free Open Source Software created a big splash back in 2003 as news circulated of the third-largest German city's defection from Microsoft. When it was announced in 2003, the story garnered coverage even in the US, such as an extensive article in USA Today on-line. Currently, about 60% of desktops are using OpenOffice, with the remaining 40% to be completed by the end of 2009. Firefox and Thunderbird are being used in all of the city's desktop machines. Ten percent of desktops are running the LiMux Debian-based distro, and 80% will be running LiMux by 2012 at the latest. Autonomy was generally considered more important than cost savings, although the LiMux initiative is increasing competition in the IT industry in Munich already. The program has succeeded because the city administration has been careful to reach out to all stakeholders, from managers down to simple end users."
Sorry to break it to you but that whole "blog" smells like troll to me...
The project will not be complete until they have a logo with Tux the Linux Penguin lofting a good German beer.
A truly excellent pizza parlor is a delight unto the heavens. Treasure the sauce and the toppings!
Here's the blog from Floria Schiessl, project leader of the LiMux distro and the Munich migration: http://www.floschi.info/
Here's a blog from someone who believes the Munich migration was a failure: http://limuxwatch.blogspot.com/
From reading both, I tend to gravitate towards the failure side. It's 2009 and only 10% migration? Wasn't this suppose to save money? It's a frigging embarrassment! How are you suppose to point to Munich as an example of free and open-source software working on a city scale when they can't even implement it in a reasonable time-frame?
Waaaah! Asus Slapped Linux in THE FACE! Sob! Somebody call the Waahmbulance!
Linux dreamers have faith that Linux is more than just a niche product for hobbyists and power users.
Mr. Babcock then goes on for like another 3,000 words, explaining how Microsoft, which makes over a billion dollars profit each month needs to follow the Linux model, which makes zero. Good luck with that!
Now maybe, in your opinion, that's criticism, in mine it's trolling
I agree!
I'm wondering if they have a percentage of the city employees who, after using Linux at work, have migrated over to Linux at home?
Over the years I've read a great deal about various efforts to belittle and undermine it. The Munich Limux Watch blog seems like an attempt to systematically discredit the entire project. I'd love to find out who's behind it. I doubt it's directly supported Microsoft, but I'd wouldn't be surprised if there is some business interest, perhaps a disgruntled IT supplier or even a public sector employee who doesn't want their desktop system changed, behind it. Perhaps some clever Slashdot reader can find out more.
Don't be surprised that there are unexpected costs on a project of this size and complexity. Think about similar projects in the (semi-)public sector, some of which had factor 10 cost overruns and were abandoned (for example: Denver airport luggage processing system). In the end, the ability to actually complete the project, even if years late, and the long-term cost savings will determine its real success. [See my signature below]
We shouldn't expect Limux to have an instant pay back. Even though the operating system is free, the installation scripting, customization, roll-out, training and support have real costs, which will take years to amortize. The gain will only be in the long-term when the infrastructure to support Limux is in place and saves from not having license costs associated with forced upgrades are realized.
Further, you must bear in mind that Munich is a pioneer in even attempting to replace a major Microsoft based infrastructure with open source software. They are having to to do everything from scratch, which I'm sure increases the cost.
Munich's Limux project is a battleground for Microsoft. It it succeeds then it will become the model for similar initiatives. This could make non-Microsoft desktop systems a real alternative for large institutions. This is Microsoft's disaster scenario, and could ruin their monopoly hold on the marker. They might even have to, gasp, compete.
---- It won't be as bad as you fear or as good as you hope, but it will take twice as long as you plan.
From the blog:
According to vice director SchieÃYl, an upgrade of the then-existing Windows NT4 operating system to Windows XP would have been as much as two million euros cheaper.
Hmm I wonder how they arrived at that figure? If the blog said Windows 2000 to Windows XP then I might concede however NT4 is normally used on servers (it's a bit expensive for the desktop) I would have expected NT4 to Windows 2003. Are we talking servers here or the desktop and why XP did not Microsoft want firms to upgrade to Vista? Even if the figure they gave is true well that is Government for you and for a city like Munich then 2 million Euros is not that much for a one time cost..
The biggest obstacle to installing a Linux Distribution on the desktop is actually middle management not the rank and file worker. If your business has locked themselves into Microsoft solutions then shifting to Linux solutions is going to be hard be it server or desktop and in many ways expensive because there are many proprietary Microsoft solutions that make integration with other operating systems difficult. It must be noted that this is not the fault of other operating systems but of Microsoft, after-all it is not as if Linux solutions hide their API's and source code.
There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
as alot of people finding out in these tough times its hard to put food on a table if you give your work away for free
If work was being given away for free, the budget would be a tad smaller, right?
I repeat: buying Microsoft licenses is *not* going to improve economy. It only improves Microsoft profits.
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
whats wrong with a company making a profit?
Strawman.
It's not just "a company", it's Microsoft. If you don't know why Microsoft is special, I recommend a few more years in the internets before proceeding with commenting on tech websites.
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
As Microsoft strives to migrate their core technologies from the desktop onto the Web, so too is their propaganda machine migrating from the established press to the informal social web. Microsoft shills are invading social web sites everywhere - in forums, discussion groups, comments to news items, edits to Wikipedia, manipulation of search engines, comments to blogs - posing as innocent participants to promote their agenda and counter wide spread complaints about their shady marketing practises. Even in the comments section of blogs by Microsoft employees on their own corporate site they employ sock puppets to say the things the author felt inappropriate to say directly. They race to place their shill postings at the top spot in the comments section of news and blogs, or perhaps they are given advance notice enabling them to do this where they are a sponsor.
The evidence is here on Slashdot for all to see, without embellishments from me. What I say here is amounts to only a digest of hundreds of postings by others. A careful investigator can see for himself the evolution of discussions on Microsoft related issues, especially those accusing them of their usual hard ball tactics. As one reads from Slashdot's historical record on through to recent times, the evolution of Microsoft's efforts to pervert Slashdot's discussions becomes readily apparent. Microsoft's ambition is to twist internet discussions around a full 180 degrees until these discussions become a platform for propaganda from Microsoft's "Ministry of Truth". A study of the comments of the shills posted here can be cross-correlated with postings on other sites. Their pattern of saturating a discussion with shill postings, and the repeating of mindless memes becomes obvious. Their harassment, ridicule, and suppression of criticisms is designed to intimidated those who would speak out against them. They seek to establish and enforce a discipline of giving Microsoft "fair treatment" and their propaganda the same consideration and respect a real person would deserve.
In the process they are destroying Web 2 as we know it. This insidious attack on the infrastructure we rely upon to form our opinions in a complex world has both a direct and an inhibitory effect on free speech as a side effect.
We must stop this while it is in its infancy. Once it fully established, it will become much more difficult to root out, and other ruthless corporations, organizations, and even governments will want to emulate the success of Microsoft's campaign. This is the nightmare vision of the end of the social internet as we know it.
whats wrong with a company making a profit?
Nothing, but there are different way to achieve a profit
.
In the case of Microsoft there are recognised problems with the morality of their business model.
It's the client who has (should have!) the liberty to go along with a particular business model and Munich has made it's decision not to follow the Microsoft ways.
Some claim there is no morality in business but especially when public monies are involved you better review that opinion.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Nothing. Of course MS wants to make a profit, and good luck to them. But I don't work for them, so MS profits don't benefit me.
This whole Munchen idea was NOT about how much the company's involved making money. It was about the CONSUMER paying less money.
You know - I always think it is strange that these arguments are all about how the company's are driving well, but not how the consumers (and that are you and me and the man in the street - make no mistake) are served well. I do not care a bit if Microsoft gets money or gets a lot more money. However - I DO care if it is MY money. Open Source software is cheap, so it is a big bonus for me as consumer. I do not care if Ballmer gets a lot of money - as long it's not my money. Result? If I buy some Microsoft software I shoot myself in the foot. Most consumers - and that's most of you and certainly me - are better off with Open Source software. Simple...
Try to see all this from a consumer point of view.
Several big failures of the UK's government's IT strategy has been due to the sheer incompetence of the *private* contractors.
Or what about train companies in the UK, or highway operators in Mexico. In both cases the original "investors" cashed in on their shares as soon as they could and left a mess behind that the government has had to paid.
I can also say that, having worked all my life in private industry, your comment, which seems to imply government=ineptitude could easily apply as well to major well known corporations.
It is ironic that now that governments are having to bail out banks (not for the first time mind you, in Mexico we got deeply into debt to avoid the collapse of the financial system during the 90s), car manufacturers and insurers there are still people out there equalling government with incompetence.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
NT4 is normally used on servers (it's a bit expensive for the desktop
NT4 came in Server and Workstation versions (and some other big-server versions, I think). The Workstation version was not much more expensive than Windows 95, especially with a corporate site-license and had a lot of features that make sense in a corporate environment (e.g. login that you can't bypass by pressing 'escape'). It was a bit expensive for home users (I ran it because I got a free copy and bought a computer which came with no OS), but a lot of students ran it because the student license OS bundle included both '95 and NT4 for around £40. NT4 was a bit more RAM-intensive than '95, but if you had 32MB it ran nicely (my desktop at the time was a P166 with 32MB of RAM). If you wanted a corporate MS network before 2000 was released, and didn't want to pay a lot to Novell, you bought NT4 Server for the servers and NT4 Workstation for the desktops.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
To whom is that blog directed? (a blog that started barely 6 months ago).
Not to the German public it seems.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Google, Red Hat and others must be shitting their pants ...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Unless your company is a "protection" racket Mafia or something similarly ethically dubious (like abusing your monopolistic position in a market for example).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
RedHat had a 30% revenue increase. Last year. How many other IT companies were able to accomplish that (maybe except for Apple)? DUH.
There are two rules for success:
1. Never tell everything you know.
Making an assumption here, but perhaps Open Office's release of two major versions during the project's lifecycle may have something to do with the delay.
If I was running this show, I'd have uber-time blocked off for compatibility testing to make sure key stakeholders (see, "important people with important spreadsheets") were happy, even if that meant delaying roll-out for the next major OOo release.
body massage!
This was on the internets yesterday: http://blogs.computerworld.com/digg_dug_buried_how_linux_news_disappears
German society and culture is different from the English speaking world. They only accept perfection, anything less is off the radar. They also indulge in Grundlichkeit (excessive thoroughness) which means that everything must be done all out, Unter Voll Dampf (under full steam) and if it costs time or money to do it, they'll take a first class ticket everytime. Not only that but in engineering they test everything to absolute destruction, build it completely new, break it again and then build it completely new and continue this process with the dedication of a Zen master. You just need to take a walk up any mountain in Germany to observe this in action. No one is wearing Jeans and a T-shirt and everyone is toting the sort of equipment required on expedition to summit K2. They even have similar equipment for their dogs.
So ten per cent success rate considering the incredibly short work week state employees enjoy is not just going well, it's an unprecedent level of efficiency.
Posts, MyBio or Sig, may contain satire, sarcasm, bolded nouns be sardonic or even witty & be Church of SD
This is pretty tame compared to such shining Linux example blogs as Groklaw and BoycottNovell.
There's plenty of bias to go around.
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
I'm living in Berlin now and of the things which hits me hard just about every day (literally) are the bloody doors.
German doors aren't mere convenience items, they are designed to stop tanks. British doors in comparison are made of cardboard, mainly for show, you can swing one open with a flick of the wrist. Attempt that with a German door an you will be nursing a sprained shoulder for the rest of the week. Clearly it's a design intention that going through a door should be something one does with care and aforethought.
Deleted
Like the article says, âoethey reached out to all stakeholdersâ. I think the amazing part is that they got enough stakeholders to agree to the change. Change is not something that a lot of people âoeembraceâ if you will, especially government agencies that entrenched in their ways of doing things. I could easily imagine them taking ten years just to make a decision never mind getting the project started. I would say that to have gotten as much done as fast as they have would be considered the speed of light in a lot of situations.
From the article at http://www.osor.eu/case_studies/declaration-of-independence-the-limux-project-in-munich#section-12/
Notice it was delayed by patent FUD. Software patents are not valid in the EU.
Notice also that they are implementing it in stages, using Open Source on top of Windows and only some departments installing Linux at a given time. It has a time line going to 2012 for completion. Incremental migration is pretty normal on large projects.
Conclusions
"There are perhaps two main lessons to be drawn from Munich's experience. The first one is that such a large-scale migration requires careful analysis and planning, as well as a clearly defined goal. It bears repeating that in Munich this goal is the strategic independence from software suppliers. Lower IT costs are a welcome side-effect, but autonomy is more important."
I see no failure. I see people thinking outside the Microsoft box. People who are interested might actually read and understand. http://www.osor.eu/case_studies/declaration-of-independence-the-limux-project-in-munich#section-12
I don't believe that anyone in the Linux world has ever suggested that migrating to Linux is completely "free", or even that it saves money in the short term. It most definitely saves tons of money in the long run. To suggest otherwise amounts to FUD.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
So what you are saying is that you want evolution, but that is one of the few options you never explored? ... and don't tell me it doesn't work. It does. I have used it any time I had to deal with Outlook servers. It works fine (i.e. as good or better than Outlook) when configured properly .
P.S. - Because it is a Gnome project the page makes it sound like you need to use the Gnome Window Manager. You don't. It works great with KDE 3.x and KDE 4.x. I suspect it works with most or all other WMs as well, so long as the gnome libs are on the system.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
As much as I like to bash Microsoft, that doesn't completely answer his question. Even if there are more pro-Microsoft posters on Slashdot, does it mean that those posters are shills? Maybe their claims are justified.
As much as I like to bash Microsoft, that doesn't completely answer his question. Even if there are more pro-Microsoft posters on Slashdot, does it mean that those posters are shills? Maybe their claims are justified.
You're right, he did not document it well, but take a look at "uassholes" reply for some nice commentary by one of the people running Digg about how there is definitely an astroturf program in place to bury articles critical of Microsoft there. Personally on Slashdot I've made a lot comments about MS's antitrust abuses in various articles and I noticed in such articles there are often dozens of comments from a handful of users whose posting history shows they only post in articles discussing Microsoft or Linux and always expressing the same view. I don't have any proof that these posters are in fact astroturfers, but if not they have a lot of time and very, very limited interest here. They generally only reply to highly modded posts ignoring everything else including replies to their comments. Further, I notice that comments I have which can be construed as critical of MS's practices are often modded to +5 for several days, then modded down significantly afterwards once the article is off the main page. Maybe it is simply normal behavior I don't understand, but I'm highly suspicious.
At the start of the early 2000s there was essentially a controlled experiment about implementing Linux on the desktop.
In the first category we had companies like AutoZone, Burlington Coat Factory and Pep Boys that never had developed a Windows culture to begin with. These were Unix shops (generally SCO or Solaris) and they transitioned quickly (within a year or 2) and easily (say under 100 man years) to Linux.
In the second category we had technology knowledgeable companies that wanted to transition to all Unix/Linux, and considered it important but not critical. IBM, Oracle, Sun (Sun Java desktop) being leading examples. They failed, believing it was not worth the distraction even though this failure was quite embarrassing. In many people's estimation they gave up much too quickly.
In the third category we had places that wanted to transition to Linux for ideological reasons. Most of them found the processes daunting and gave up. Munich is a great example of the 3rd category. They have some technical depth but not a technical user base. They have financial resources but are somewhat cost constrained. And they had a Windows culture. That is Munich is sort of a good case study for most companies that are not IT focused. When Munich is successful they will provide a wonderful example that it is possible and how to do it. Right now they provide a caution of the complexities.
Do you think there is a time limit? Munich is nearly 900 years old - what would be the rush? I think they are going about it in an interesting fashion; first transition to open source software that runs on Windows (OpenOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird). Only when people are used to this software do they start transitioning the desktops. Seems pretty sensible to me and it looks like they are playing a long game here.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
Bearing in mind that the have migrated only 10% of desktops in 6 years
One reason the migrations has been slow is because in 2004 they decided they wanted to do a study, the "study was conducted to clear up legal insecurities related to software patents. The actual migration has been running since 2005." Still it has been a long tyme.
Falcon
Should there be a Law?
I used to follow some small stocks on Yahoo for a while. The message boards became almost useless because there were a few trolls who would post endlessly the same things over and over again on totally obscure stock message boards. They would usually get replied to but would never argue. They would just post the same thing over and over again. This is probably the best indicator of a sock puppet or troll. They never argue or reply to criticism. They just keep posting the same crap over and over again and just wait for non-sock puppets to get bored of them and stop posting which lets them dominate the forum.
Most of these robotic stock bashers were probably paid by hedge funds that were shorting stocks. Microsoft has an enormous marketing budget. It would be easy for them to run a campaign like this.