Munich Open Source Switch 'Completed Successfully'

Qedward writes "Munich's switch to open source software has been successfully completed, with the vast majority of the public administration's users now running its own version of Linux, city officials said today. In one of the premier open source software deployments in Europe, the city migrated from Windows NT to LiMux, its own Linux distribution. LiMux incorporates a fully open source desktop infrastructure. The city also decided to use the Open Document Format (ODF) as a standard, instead of proprietary options. Ten years after the decision to switch, the LiMux project will now go into regular operation, the Munich City council said."

Comments

good for them!

[lyapunov]

This is a pleasant surprise.

Hopefully the near 12 million pound savings can be expanded upon and cause others to follow suit.

Other Motives

[mx b]

While the financial savings is great, let's also not forget that it is partially about freedom -- no forced upgrades from vendors, no special expensive proprietary software to read what should be public record, etc. I am more excited about the latter -- an openly accessible government and public records is important no matter how much it costs, but it's especially nice that we can have that AND save some cash.

Re:Other Motives

[TaoPhoenix]

What about motives for us?

To me this is a new wrinkle in the Linux discussion. We've been seeing uBuntu's "slide towards the Dark Side". A city running its own distro built at least partially from scratch (with German Engineers! Ha! Take that!) can potentially have a super clean codebase with none of the bloated and/or dangerous commercial cruft.

To my layman's eyes, Linux has been suffering from a bit of "X distro is/once was good and is slowly dying from lack of funds or internal politics". But a City has its own different motivation - it needs to Get Stuff Done with people mostly properly trained, vs the whole End User struggle for commercial distros.

So what if we can tap into their work and use it ourselves? Could they provide us with a distro with the full power of a city distro with (hopefully!) no hidden agendas, backed by their level of tech support they use themselves? That could be a new go-stone in the OS Wars.

Since the Germans are probably as upset as anyone else at the NSA, isn't that sorta "pitting them in a cage match vs the NSA spy-hackers"? If you had to put a bet on the NSA attacker vs the German Defender, which way would you go?

 

Re:Other Motives

[Anonymous Coward]

I see Linux admin salaries at ~10% more than for Windows but perhaps they can get by with fewer.

No "perhaps" about it. I've been an admin in a lot of different mixed shops and the ratio of servers to admins is always better for *nix than for Windows, true for both servers and desktops. Gotta love ubiquitous scripting tools and absence of Patch Tuesday.

Re:Other Motives

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft's claims are based on speculation and estimates and blatant self-interest.

FTFY.

Re:Other Motives

[citizenr]

Even if it cost more (and it didnt) all the money would go directly into local economy (IT staff wages) instead of offshore M$ Tax heaven.

Re:Other Motives

[phoenix_rizzen]

We're living proof that it's possible. Local school district, using diskless Linux in every school, roughly 95% of all PCs in the district are running Linux. IT budget is just barely over $100,000/year and that includes hardware and software. 14,000 students in the district, spread across ~10 towns, in 50-odd buildings. Only 14 IT staff, looking after it all.

We pay $0 for the OS and 90-odd% of our apps (we pay for a CAD program, a typing program, and some VC stuff).

Computers are diskless appliances, booting off the network, mounting filesystems off the local server, and running all applications locally. Thus, we get all the centralised management of a thin-client setup, but with all the power of a local computer (apps run on the local CPU, using the local 3D graphics card, pumping audio through the local soundcard, etc). Each one is under $200 CDN, with a quad-core Athlon-II CPU, 2 GB of RAM, and either nVidia or ATi graphics onboard.

They are treated as "disposable" appliances -- if one fails, sent it to maint, grab a spare, plug it in, carry on with your day. Replacement time for a hardware failure is under 15 minutes.

4 service desk staff look after 90% of the software side of things from a central office. 5 school techs look after the other 10% of the software onsite, and hardware issues. Then there's a video conferencing tech, a hardware tech, an electrician, some programmers and managers.

We're using Debian on the servers, FreeBSD on the firewalls and backups servers, and Xubuntu on the desktops. $0/desk.

Oh, did I mention we also have NX installed to allow any student/staff member remote access to their full Linux desktop from anywhere? Try that without licensing fees on Windows. :)

We went from paying several hundred thousand dollars per year in software licensing (Novell Netware, Windows, Office, anti-virus, Ghost, etc, etc, etc) to virtually nothing per year. It's been over 10 years now since we started the transition to Linux (2001), and the savings are HUGE!

ODF

[jones_supa]

The decision to prefer ODF as the document format is my favorite part here. Office and its DOCX format is pretty much the last big thing holding people to the Microsoft monoculture. More ODF files should be put into circulation in the business world.

Re:It'll cost them more in the long run

[Sarten-X]

<voice class="TV gameshow host" style="decade: 1980">

It's time to play Spot The FUD! With your host, Sarten-X!

Doing this sort of thing to spite Microsoft is silly.

Our game opens, and THERE'S SOME RIGHT THERE! Wow, right outta the gate! When we're talking about a large-scale integration project, "spite" isn't likely a significant factor, unless Microsoft has somehow managed to personally offend every politician in Munich. Note the literary device, though... by saying the decision was spiteful, the people who decided against Microsoft are cast as being evil... Who'd want to agree with someone so mean?

Whatever they save on licensing fees will end up being spent on support, and then some.

Ah, now there's the biggest bit of FUD we've seen in a long time here on Spot The FUD! Now, this might look like a restatement of a zero-sum philosophy, but it's really FUD! Not only hasn't it been established how much they'll actually save on licensing, but there's no real indication that support costs would change at all, or which direction they would go.

Playing computer politics with the taxpayer's money is irresponsible.

Wow! We're three for three here, folks! Just like the last one, this is FUD disguised as common sense. Also like last time, a little analysis shows the problem. Sure, tax money should be spent responsibly, but there's still no reason to think that "computer politics" was behind this decision. It'd be equally irresponsible to choose to be locked in to a single vendor, especially with a vendor that's made such an effort to be incompatible with alternatives.

There's a good reason why Microsoft is the standard for business computing...

This must mean it's time for...

<voice class="crowd">

THE BOOK OF HISTORY!

</voice>

That's right, folks: The Book Of History! Let me just crack it open and... here we go! Throughout the '80s and '90s, Microsoft made exclusive deals with developers and hardware manufacturers to ensure that Windows was the operating system with the widest support, regardless of its actual merit as a platform. Once Microsoft had money to spare, competitors were purchased just to be shut down, or occasionally to have their product bundled into Windows, ensuring that there would be little viable competition in that market.

Ah, I just love history... but we're not done yet! We'll be right back after these commercial messages!

<voice class="pushy salesman">

Do you suffer from shills? Do you wish you had more rational discourse? Are you irritated by ignorance? Order FUD-B-GONE today! Apply directly to shills' sinus cavities! It might look like a set of brass knuckles, but FUD-B-GONE is really a precision-engineered shill ELIMINATOR! Only $19.99! Send check or money order to the address on your screen! Ordervoidwhereprohibitedbylawmustbeeighteenoroldersorrynoc.o.d.

</voice>

and that's because their products are almost always better than open source.

Well, we're almost out of time, but here's our last bit of FUD for today! It's a pretty easy one, too... Of course, there's no definition of "better" to go along with this unqualified statement, so this shill expects you to accept it at face value, but we know that "better" depends on a wide variety of criteria!

And that's all the time we have for today! Thanks for joining us! Be sure to tune in next time when we hear a concerned parent tell us about the hidden dangers of vaccination, even though her "research" is based on urban legends that predate vaccines!

</voice>

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