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

Posted by EditorDavid on from the public-money-public-code dept.

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.

17 of 255 comments (clear)

  1. In breaking news.... by chrism238 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    In breaking news, Microsoft has just announced that it will supply the City of Barcelona with free licences for all of its software needs.

    1. Re:In breaking news.... by deek · · Score: 5, Funny

      If that truly does happen, can you imagine what the headlines the next day would be?
      Yep, every other city in Europe suddenly announcing a move to Linux.

    2. Re:In breaking news.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Most IT shops do not know the answer to three questions
      1) How much (all up, everything) do we pay microsoft in licence fees per year
      2) How much do we pay other vendors for licence fees
      3) Over 3 years how much have we paid for software- all up, including lawyers, audits, and licence management packages, and administrators who add nothing to the bottom line ensuring 'compliance'

      Looks like one city has asked these questions, and cost per seat is visible. The main haters of open source are click and pointers who can't learn - and they need to go.

    3. Re:In breaking news.... by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 3, Interesting

      So, Windows-based networks can cohabit with Mac and Linux devices just fine, but Linux-based networks can't do this? That seems a little hard to believe.

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
    4. Re:In breaking news.... by Lonewolf666 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      My understanding is that Munich had to keep a fraction of machines under windows, because some of their proprietary software was not easily migrated to open source. But they still wanted to (mostly) avoid the expense of migrating to a new version of Windows, which would have required hardware updates as well as new licenses. So they went ahead and got into some technical difficulties, as well as push back from users.

      Overall, I think Barcelona has the better strategy here, even if it will take them longer. Both in terms of a smooth transition on the technical side and in terms of less excuses for unwilling users.

      Because if you replace the software in smaller increments, the claim the whole system sucks does not work anymore. Instead, you can require people to be more specific with their complaints. Such as Joe Shmoe saying "Libre Office does not work with my documents". Then a support guy can visit Joe and ask him to demonstrate the problem, and how to fix it will become more obvious.
      - If only Joe did not understand how to use that feature in Libre Office, show him.
      - If many employees have problems using Libre Office, your training program might suck. Improve it, maybe invest in more training time for each employee.
      - If it is a genuine bug, work with the Libre Office developers to fix it. Maybe actually hire some developers for that.

      --
      C - the footgun of programming languages
    5. Re:In breaking news.... by Rob+Y. · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

      --
      Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
    6. Re:In breaking news.... by Humbubba · · Score: 4, Funny
      Barcelona is amazing. First they try to leave Spain, now Microsoft.

      To avoid the Munich muck, Barcelona will have to more than replace Microsoft specific apps with cross platform and WEB based equivalents. Munich had pressure from the computer users, IT staff, politicos, businessmen, and a lot of the tech industry, not just Microsoft. It's hard to abandon the world standard.

  2. Here's an idea by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Maybe Barcelona and Munich could just meet up and swap all their computers!

    --
    #DeleteChrome
    1. Re:Here's an idea by ClickOnThis · · Score: 5, Interesting

      It would appear that Barcelona may have planned their migration to Open-Source much better than Munich did. Per TFS, Barcelona began using Open-Source applications within Windows, long before they took the step to replace the underlying OS. That way, they had all their staff trained on the Open-Source tools, so the switch of the OS would be less onerous.

      This will be worth watching. I wish them luck.

      --
      If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
    2. Re: Here's an idea by cyber-vandal · · Score: 5, Funny

      You don't need to plan. Just get one of the experts on here to do it all. It'll just take a weekend apparently.

  3. Re:20 years later... by Hognoxious · · Score: 5, Funny

    The country of Barcelona

    I don't need to be psychic to work out where you're from...

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  4. Next by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 4, Funny

    All the city's computers swich their locale settings to ca_ES.UTF-8, annoying the shit out of everybody. Then they hold a referendum to propose disconnecting from the internet and dumping their .es top-level domain name. Then the main server flees to Belgium.

    --
    "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
  5. Thanks to the cloud by aussie_a · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What really makes this possible is the cloud. Typically industry specific software will make it really difficult to migrate away from Windows, but as more and more of these programs migrate to a browser based interface, Linux compatibility shoots through the roof.

    By going with a phased approach where the OS is the last thing to migrate, they have already demonstrated more forethought than many other organisations. The real milestones will be when they get finance to move away from excel and when they replace senior members of IT. Until they meet those milestones, this will in all likelihood end up being a giant waste of money and time.

  6. Re:20 years later... by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 4, Funny

    The country of Barcelona

    I don't need to be psychic to work out where you're from...

    Now, now - Redmond's schools are better than that.

    --
    #DeleteChrome
  7. Re:They need to move to free software hardware fir by q_e_t · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

  8. Re:destined to fail by Idimmu+Xul · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Europeans love to hate on billion dollar tax evaders

    there, fixed that for you

    --
    The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
  9. Re:Spectrum by pi_rules · · Score: 5, Funny

    Spectrum (Charter / Brighthouse / Time Warner) Cable has switched to Libre Office for customer care and some other departments.

    The whole customer service departments of all three aren't on MS Office now? That's like.. four... people? SUCK IT MICROSOFT!