City of Barcelona Dumps Windows For Linux and Open Source Software (europa.eu)

An anonymous reader quotes Open Source Observatory: The City of Barcelona is migrating its computer systems away from the Windows platform, reports the Spanish newspaper El País. The City's strategy is first to replace all user applications with open-source alternatives, until the underlying Windows operating system is the only proprietary software remaining. In a final step, the operating system will be replaced with Linux... According to Francesca Bria, the Commissioner of Technology and Digital Innovation at the City Council, the transition will be completed before the current administration's mandate ends in spring 2019. For starters, the Outlook mail client and Exchange Server will be replaced with Open-Xchange. In a similar fashion, Internet Explorer and Office will be replaced with Firefox and LibreOffice, respectively. The Linux distribution eventually used will probably be Ubuntu, since the City of Barcelona is already running 1,000 Ubuntu-based desktops as part of a pilot...

Barcelona is the first municipality to have joined the European campaign 'Public Money, Public Code'. This campaign is an initiative of the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) and revolves around an open letter advocating that publicly funded software should be free. Currently, this call to public agencies is supported by more than 100 organisations and almost 15,000 individuals. With the new open-source strategy, Barcelona's City Council aims to avoid spending large amounts of money on licence-based software and to reduce its dependence on proprietary suppliers through contracts that in some cases have been closed for decades.

Comments

Re:They need to move to free software hardware fir

[q_e_t]

These days Linux support for hardware is pretty good, and moderate diligence alleviates that risk. 15 years ago I would have agreed with you, and 10 years ago there were still some issues. In my personal experience there is now little that is not supported for the typical office environment. It's different if you are talking things like mass spectrometers, or some music hardware, but in those corner cases (which the Barcelona government might not even have) then you can buy an occasional Windows machine, although the TCO for those individual machines might be quite high. The area that might his Barcelona the most might be quality of drivers for high end graphics cards for architectural work.

Re:In breaking news....

[Rob Y.]

Well, it sounds like Barcelona has learned a thing or two from Munich's experience. They're not switching to Linux - or at least, not until the last Windows-only app is pried from users' cold, dead hands. They are going to standardize on the Windows versions of open source apps, like LibreOffice. And presumably some open sourced email and scheduling software. And they're going to plow the savings on Office and Exchange into getting replacement software written for whatever other stuff they need.

Seriously, if they standardize on web applications for everything except perhaps stuff like LibreOffice, which exists on just about every platform - they're already way ahead of Munich. Munich made a valiant effort back in the day when desktop software was still king. Switching to Linux - and then trying to get all your desktop software rewritten for your chosen Linux target (another Munich problem - LiMux, whatever that is) turned out to be a recipe for partial success at best. But sticking with the Windows OS until you really don't need it any more for anything is a much better approach. And using Windows pretty much the same way you'd use a Chromebook (i.e. to access apps running on a server) is another way to save a bunch on IT support costs. Good luck, Barcelona.