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How Munich Abandoned Microsoft for Open Source
An anonymous reader writes "TechRepublic has the story behind Munich City Council's decision to ditch Microsoft Windows and Office in favor of open source software. The project leader talks about why the shift was primarily about freedom, in this case freeing itself from being tied into Microsoft's infrastructure and having control over the software it uses. He talks about how the council managed to keep such a large project on track, despite affecting 15,000 people and spanning nine years. He also warns against organizations justifying the shift to open source software on the grounds that it will save money, arguing this approach is always likely to fail."
A new set of verses is needed: In München steht ein Linuxhaus
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
The question is, how they managed to do this despite of Microsoft Economical Power. How they avoided bribery of the involved politicians?
-- --
They will shit their pants when they see the open office suite completely messing the layout of the documents.
I hope all you morons like what you voted for.
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2013/11/19/cms-official-60-to-70-percent-of-obamacares-web-system-still-hasnt-been-built-n1749461
"REP. CORY GARDNER: Well how much do we have to build today, still? What do we need to build? 50 percent? 40 percent? 30 percent?
HENRY CHAO: I think it's, uh, just an approximation, we're probably sitting somewhere between 60 and 70 percent because we still have to build...
GARDNER: Wait, 60 or 70 percent that needs to be built, still?
CHAO: Because we still have to build the payment systems to make payments to insurers in January.
GARDNER: Let me get this correct. Sixty to 70 percent of Healthcare.gov still needs to be built?
CHAO: It's not really about Healthcare.gov -- it's the federally-facilitated marketplace.
GARDNER: The entire system that the American people are being required to rely upon...
CHAO: Healthcare.gov -- the online application, verification, determination, plan compare, getting enrolled, generating the enrollment transaction -- that's 100 percent there.
GARDNER: But the entire system is 60 to 70 percent away from being complete. "
Is that what is fucking hilarious?
60-70% of the building still has to be done, including the payment system, which is crucial, because, see, without a payment system, you can't actually purchase insurance.
They've got 11 days to build 60-70% of the site, after not being able to do so after 3 1/2 years. And then, after they've built the remaining 60-70%, they expect, best case scenario, to have it working for 80% of users.
Even assuming they manage this, which, based on their history of stumblefuck bumbling and hapless pratfall incompetence, they won't -- What An Adventure it will be to enter your credit card information into Obama's website!
Or does that not make pfennigs ??
Bavaria, the last bastion of once mighty Germany (for Germans).
He also warns against organizations justifying the shift to open source software on the grounds that it will save money, arguing this approach is always likely to fail.
Meh... maybe.
FLOSS changes the costs. You spend more in training, but save on material. If your organization already has significant training procedures to accommodate big processes (like, say, a government would have), you'll probably come out ahead on the deal. If you have an office of 50 people who were all hired already knowing Microsoft's products, you can expect significant retraining costs that might exceed what you'll save on licensing.
Of course, managers who are focused solely on the cost will decline any training investment, figuring that it's similar enough to older Microsoft offerings that there should be no problem. Then when the users complain that they don't know the software, they blame the software for the failure.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
I've seen German porn. It's going to get very messy in here with all the joygasms.
The thing that blew me away is they had a much more advanced set of issues to deal with than a typical bureaucratic office would. The custom macros and apps isn't something that a normal company would be hung up on. That would imply to me that so long as your office can find equivalents of their core applications (whether it be accounting or graphics software), the rest shouldn't be so difficult to overcome. I've always rolled my eyes at the idea of a real-world migration for company of significant size.
Here's an interesting tidbit from the article about how Microsoft inflated the costs of their migration to put a negative spin on the project:
A team of just 25 people at Munich develop, roll out and provide final support for the Ubuntu-based LiMux client. A larger number of people look after the everyday administration of the city's PCs but far fewer than the 1,000 people cited in the Microsoft/HP report as implementing the LiMux project.
Another hidden benefit is even if your project doesn't look like it'll pan out, if you make it high-profile enough you know you can use it to leverage a better contract with Microsoft if you decide to stick with Windows.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
In other words they made their decision based upon vague subjective factors - e.g. fear of loss of control rather than the objective criteria of saving money.
"He also warns against organizations justifying the shift to open source software on the grounds that it will save money, arguing this approach is always likely to fail."
so just to say FU MS?
Which is it? "Always" or "Likely"?
Pairing those two words together like that is always likely a mistake.
Nobodies Prefect
Tidbits for Techs Technology Blog
I suspect that everyone (except MS) are extremely happy to break the chains of monitoring licenses and making sure that their accounts are paid up etc.
If I were the CFO of a company I would love to answer the call from some MSDN "certified" bunch of losers call wondering where their renewal check is and I could then tell them that they can go to hell.
But now in these post Snowden times I would be extremely wary of any corporate data where a Microsoft OS has access to my data. How much state sponsored corporate espionage has been taking place with the cooperation of MS? None, Some, Tonnes?
Any foreign company competing with politically connected US corporations on billion dollar deals should take a long hard look at any US based OS and think, "Might the US government be grabbing my data in their National Interest?"
In some countries Cisco has been seeing huge drops in sales. I suspect that there is much more of this to come as it can be hard for a huge company to just throw their network gear out the window and replace it at the drop of a hat. But I also suspect that directives have been issued that all US gear is to be gone ASAP.
Tens of millions spent on new screens which provide less information than the old flippy-type info on upcoming and incoming trains/subways and they're down all the fucking time. ALL the time. Usually with the typical NT error message in a grey box on a blue screen. Or there's a dump and some module names.
The project leader talks about why the shift was primarily about freedom, ... He also warns against organizations justifying the shift to open source software on the grounds that it will save money, arguing this approach is always likely to fail.
I think that is the core difficulty in advancing the use of F/LOSS (in the US at least). We are so culturally indoctrinated to see money, and the single-minded pursuit of it, as the measure of success that it is institutionally difficult to grasp sacrificing money in the short run for freedom; regardless of the impact on our bottom line, society, or the larger economy in the long run. The American mindset believes freedom is good in theory, but fails to see that economic success is coupled to choosing freedom -- in a broader sense than the freedom to screw your putative customers -- over short-run revenue.
Wow, those are some seriously run-on sentences. Bite me, ... ummm, Sklansky and Malmuth? ... Case and Shiller? ... Black and Scholes? ... Ah, yes, I remember! Strunk and White! That's it. What was I talking about?
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
The comments here are about the difficulty, the expense, the problems with user acceptance, etc. All of those imply that this sort of change is somehow and optional thing that they can choose to do...or not. In actuality, however, this change is both mandatory and inevitable...and only a matter of time. Maybe next year, maybe in 5 years, or maybe in 10 years but every single enterprise will eventually be forced to make this switch as Microsoft evolves and changes ('implodes' is the word that comes to mind) as it tries to maintain growth and earnings while trying to continue selling the same thing to the same places that already have purchased more than they will ever need.
In my town we had a Linux "advocate" that insisted we should ditch MS and Apple for Linux to save "millions per year" in our local school district (our entire IT budget was less than $3M/year) - he felt that by proving Linux ran on 10 year old hardware in his basement, that meant we could use 10 year old hardware in the classroom...
His argument found no traction with anyone, he felt (among other things) that there was no need for central management of 1,500 desktops & laptops, that our robust networking infrastructure could be replaced by unmanaged switches, and our seven campus WiFi network could be served with an infinite number of $40 routers flashed with WRT, etc.
Ken
Dear Employees,
We will be switching from Microsoft/Office to Linux and $FOSS_OFFICE. Whining about this change will not be tolerated. You must learn how to use the new system. Period. That is all there is to it. No complaining allowed.
Sincerely,
The person who can fire you
for example:
http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/2/2898/1.html
Maybe next year, maybe in 5 years, or maybe in 10 years but every single enterprise will eventually be forced to make this switch as Microsoft evolves and changes ('implodes' is the word that comes to mind) as it tries to maintain growth and earnings...
Microsoft is doing extraordinarily well in the enterprise market and talk of an implosion is nonsense.
Commercial Licensing revenue was $9.594 billion, with a gross margin of $8.801 billion. This is growth of 7 percent and 8 percent, respectively. SharePoint, Exchange, and Lync all achieved double digits growth, and multi-year licensing revenue was up 8 percent.
Commercial Other revenue was $1.603 billion and had a gross margin of $0.275 billion, growing by 28 percent and 161 percent, respectively. Cloud revenue was up by 103 percent, with both Office 365 seats and Azure customs both increasing by triple digits. Two thirds of Dynamics CRM customers are now opting for cloud deployments.
Windows Division notional revenue is up 4 percent at $4.581 billion, but operating income is down 20 percent at $2.242 billion. This shows just how significant the impact of the decline of the PC market is, as well Microsoft's continued failure to capture any significant share of the tablet market.
Server and Tools revenue was up 11 percent to $5.052 billion, and operating income was up 17 percent to $2.026 billion. In contrast to the Windows Division results, this shows the much greater resilience of the purely enterprise-focused offerings.
Microsoft posts record Q1 revenue, increased operating income: Windows OEM revenue sharply down, but enterprise sales buoyant.
Hope someone lost their job over that ...
No matter what technical solution you end up with, if it takes you nine years to switch to a new platform, you can be pretty damn certain where you ended up isn't where you want to be or should be.
Tell us how you REALLY feel about Exchange. We can take it.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
With some minor "security" patch.
Not without LOTS of money first.
Even then, you cannot rebuild it to see if it is actually the same code that is in use on the system.
So access to the code is useless for verification.
Dear Employees,
We will be switching from Windows 7 to Windows 8. Whining about this change will not be tolerated. You must learn how to use the new system. Period. That is all there is to it. No complaining allowed.
Sincerely,
The person who can fire you
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
This is one of the major rollouts of Kubuntu and it's lovely they are working with us Kubuntu developers. We have a bug squashing party in the offices of the company incharge of this at the weekend which is a great way to work together.
Dear Employees, We will be sticking with Windows XP and IE 6. Whining about this change will not be tolerated. You must learn how to tolerate this ancient system. Period. That is all there is to it. No complaining allowed. Sincerely, The person who can fire you
This space intentionally left blank
Dear Boss,
You can take this job and shove it! No whining will be tolerated. You will have to make do without my expertise. Period. That is all there is to it. No complaining allowed.
Sincerely,
Your ex-employee
[See that sounds just as idiotic as your comment. In truth we need each other. Though if you are going to be a jerk, I will find somewhere else to work. And because I am one of your better employees, good luck in trying to get by with those who have nowhere else to land.]
Has it already been 9 years?
I wonder how the city of Largo Florida is doing these days?
If you go to a library in Munich there are good chances that you will find a CD on the counter. It's properly branded to the colors of the city and labeled "Linux für München". Ubuntu 12.04 Ihr Open Source Betriebssytsem (Your open source OS). It comes with a leaflet explaining the why open source is an alternative (open code, security, working on old computers, free) and why the city bets on open source (the LiMux project). Here's a picture: http://bit.ly/HXTODz
I find it very intelligent from the city to promote free tools to empower its citizens. An example to follow.
PS: I took the CD because I wanted to post this somewhere for people to know how far Munich has gone with open source. Thanks to /. and TechRepublic for giving me teh perfect opportunity.
Mentioned it once. Think I got away with it.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I've played a little with GOsa and its non-Munich fork FusionDirectory over the years which I believe is a major part of the infrastructure of this project. GOsa is the graphical front-end of the LDAP directory and extra RPC glue. Supported services are many, though personally I've used it to manage Samba, Cyrus IMAP, Postfix, SOGo (groupware), DNS, DHCP, rsyslog, Squid, OS installation via OPSI (for windows) and FAI (for Linux - though I don't have this bit working satisfactorally yet). There are many more plugins I've never touched. Has anyone else played with it? A community outside of Europe needs to be build around this stuff so that people can get some support - it has all the setup pain of your average enterprise software. I hang out in #fusiondirectory on FreeNode (ie. IRC chat), and I believe there is a #GOsa also. These channels keep to European working hours usually (which makes life difficult for an Australian like me).
How Lovely! I really question some of the statements in the article for how to run a large IT deployment. First off, let me just say I co-engineered a custom Linux distro for my last company that was deployed to over 70,000 end user devices in a major US retailer that helps them run tens of billions in sales each year. So 14,000 is not that big of a deal to actually deploy if you are good at developing the tools to do it. My problem with this is the statement of how "they support themselves with the help of the community". There is a reason you buy support contracts and use distros that have good upgrade mechanisms. A great example is Ubuntu Desktop. They really are the leader as far as it goes these days. If you ran a major deployment, you should consider support so that when you test out the latest greatest patches and find a bug, you actually have someone to go to who is obligated and committed (contractually) to work on it. That's the main reason to buy support in FOSS. Same for running servers with RedHat as example. So they started creating their distro in 2004/2005 timeframe. If you recall where Ubuntu was in 2004/2005, upgrade in place to new levels was buggy and not working well. Patching could still cause issues and Linux was still growing up as a Desktop. Fast forward to today, they just finished deploying their image that was created years ago. What kernel does it run? Is it built off a distro they can merge patches from? Do they have a plan in place to do major upgrade and tested? My guess is no given they took 8 years to get the distro out. Also keep in mind having started a custom distro for point of sale and workstations for a large retailer, I know what goes into testing and lock downs. The sad thing is when employees that develop those distro's move on, good luck on finding their replacements. It's not even documentation or anything, but just a very specific skill set in creating custom distros. I really do hope they have a plan in place that actually uses a real Distro under the cover for theirs. Otherwise the'll be running the same un-patched workstations 10 years from now. You'd call them Munich the free and insecure at that point.
How long before this happens? http://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/11/16/207227/
Quite a dated article comparing the open source migration attempted by Freiburg vs Munich. There was also a slashdot submission on Freiburg
Would you like a nice game of chess?
Exchange is only necessary if you think it is necessary.
There are alternatives that work better. The different functions of Exchange are available, just not as a hodgepodge of functions pasted together.
I've crashed exchange servers just be sending a message with an attachment. MS doesn't seem to know how to reject a message properly.
Next...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_extinguish
Uh, Linux geek since 1999.