The City Of Munich Now Wants To Abandon Linux And Switch Back to Windows (techrepublic.com)

"The prestigious FOSS project replacing the entire city's administration IT with FOSS based systems, is about to be cancelled and decommissioned," writes long-time Slashdot reader Qbertino. TechRepublic reports: Politicians at open-source champion Munich will next week vote on whether to abandon Linux and return to Windows by 2021. The city authority, which made headlines for ditching Windows, will discuss proposals to replace the Linux-based OS used across the council with a Windows 10-based client. If the city leaders back the proposition it would be a notable U-turn by the council, which spent years migrating about 15,000 staff from Windows to LiMux, a custom version of the Ubuntu desktop OS, and only completed the move in 2013...

The use of the open-source Thunderbird email client and LibreOffice suite across the council would also be phased out, in favor of using "market standard products" that offer the "highest possible compatibility" with external and internal software... The full council will vote on whether to back the plan next Wednesday. If all SPD and CSU councillors back the proposal put forward by their party officials, then this new proposal will pass, because the two parties hold the majority.
The leader of the Munich Green Party says the city will lose "many millions of euros" if the change is implemented. The article also reports that Microsoft moved its German headquarters to Munich last year.

Comments

Someone has been visited by an MS rep

[bradley13]

I've seen this: some high-powered MS rep chats up a boss, and *presto*:

MS is great
We've got to migrate

Put that to whatever jingle you want. Also: inspect bank accounts and campaign funds.

Note also that the study supporting the move back to WIndows was carried out by Accenture (some of us know them better by their old name, Andersen Consulting). Accenture was Microsoft's Alliance Partner of the Year in 2016, so I'm sure that they have a neutral, objective reason for recommending Microsoft software.

Re:Someone has been visited by an MS rep

[Frosty Piss]

I've seen this: some high-powered MS rep chats up a boss, and *presto*:

Believe it or not there are other issues beyond "Libre/Open/WhateverOffice is just as good", because you see, big organizations such as municipalities use more software than just office, and many of them simply don't run or run well on Wine or such. And the alternatives to Excel for very complex spreadsheets leave a lot to be desired.

It's easy to think that money changed hands, but there may just be more to it than that.

Re:Someone has been visited by an MS rep

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no need to try to guess...it was widely reported the choice varies the two dominant political parties. It is just a matter of who is in the office. One has probably the hands greased by Microsoft, and the other party does not want to.

Follow the money

[Wolfrider]

--I bet somebody's getting "compensated" in some way to bring this forward. Not only would they be giving up flexibility for a corporation-centric solution, but they would be giving up privacy as well. This site alone is full of Win10 articles detailing what a POS bit of spyware it is, masquerading as an OS. Not to mention random reboots due to upgrades.

--I can only hope this doesn't get approved, but in this world currently nothing is apparently safe or predictable.

Invest those millions to improve the FOSS in use

[Anonymous Coward]

If the leader of the Munich Green Party is right and the city will lose "many millions of euros" if the change is implemented, it's too bad they don't use all that money for hiring an army of programmers. They could implement the changes they want in the FOSS themselves, and give something back to the community for the billions they will save over the next 100 years.

Monopoly Abuse

[Anonymous Coward]

The desire to switch to an office suite with the "highest possible compatibility" clearly indicates they've had trouble opening MS Office documents, and that people with MS Office have had trouble opening ODF documents.

To maintain their position in the market Microsoft make a deliberate attempt to make other software incompatible with their formats, and make their software incompatible with other formats. For example, they claim 100% technical comparability with the ODF formats, but if you open an ODS spreadsheet in Excel it strips out all the formulas, thus rendering the spreadsheet worthless.

This seems like intentional abuse of their market position to me.

Re:It's not office.

[Stephan Schulz]

I am starting my phd soon and when I do will have access to a discount office. There is no way in sweet hell I would use libre to write my thesis!

Well, a cheap office is nice for writing a thesis in. But writing a thesis in any technical field with MS Office (or Libre Office, or Apple Pages) is just masochism. That's what LaTeX is is made for.

My business went Linux, then back to Windows

[SpaceDave]

I own a private museum with about 100 computer-driven displays and half a dozen admin/office PCs. Originally I used Linux for 95% of it. Ten years later I have 2 Linux boxes left and the rest are Windows 10. I used to believe all the pro-Linux arguments I'm reading again here, but in the real world there are just too many problems with Linux. It's not any one problem - it's the plethora of annoying niggles that eventually wear you down. For example:

- Unavoidable but incompatible 3rd party hardware and software.
- "Linux-compatible" versions of software that are just crap.
- Driver issues.
- Minor but frequent differences in the way MS Office docs are rendered.
- Browser rendering differences and problems with 3rd party websites (shouldn't happen but does - nothing I can do about that).
+ many, many more little things.

If I was a better sysadmin/programmer and enjoyed spending time addressing these issues then maybe I could make Linux work better. But I'm not and I don't, so Windows it is.