The Maß Is Empty: Munich Switching Back To Windows After ~14 Years With Linux

[phoronix]

Phoronix: The Maß Is Empty: Munich Switching Back To Windows After ~14 Years With Linux

There are a lot of reasons to love Munich from Augustiner to the wiesn and Bavarian culture, but their leading use of Linux / open-source software via their LiMux initiative that began in 2003 is no more...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Munich-Back-To-Windows

[unixfan2001]

Always lovely to see politicians waste their constituents taxes...

[AJenbo]

Sad face.

I wonder what justification they have for spending 50 million on it

[dimtass]

With that amount of money they could hire programmers to implement they're own customized office suite based on the libreoffice. Also implement a customized OS.
And spend the rest of the money drinking beers.

[cl333r]

From what I heard it's because of the new head of the city, he just made a bad decision in a matter he has no clue about. However, since all rich corporations are bribing both domestic and foreign politicians, he could've also been bribed by MS.

[pgoetz]

I wonder what justification they have for spending 50 million on it

I'm guessing the Microsoft sales reps were "very kind" to the city manager. So stupid. Just when linux really is feature equivalent to Windows, and Windows has turned largely into a spyware piece of crap with version 10. The Windows ecosystem (Office365 & friends) does offer some nice business functionality (meeting scheduling, document sharing, etc.), but you pay a hefty yearly fee for this, and none of it is anything that couldn't be cobbled together from open source.

[uid313]

One one hand Windows 10 is a much better operating system than Windows XP, 7 and 8.
On the other hand, it is less relevant than ever now less work is done natively on the desktop and more in web applications.

Also is the European Union and Germany which takes privacy rather seriously comfortable with Windows 10 leaking so much data?
Windows 10 is rather known for transmitting lots of data to Microsoft, so it might not be the best suited if privacy is a concern.

[L_A_G]

The way I see it, stuff like this is why we should at least give technocracy a try...

If you're not familiar with why this took place, the main reason for it is that Microsoft promised a number of influential local politicians that they'd move their German headquarters back to München if they ditched Linux and open source. Microsoft obviously couldn't bribe officials directly, not after Lockheed was caught bribing the West German minister of defense into buying the disastrous F-104 and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act that was created as direct response to it and number of other times Lockheed had bribed foreign officials to buy their planes. However this way the politicians can boast about bringing high paying jobs to the city and use that to get more votes so it's still essentially a bribe even if money didn't change hands.

[WolfpackN64]

The way I see it, stuff like this is why we should at least give technocracy a try...

If you're not familiar with why this took place, the main reason for it is that Microsoft promised a number of influential local politicians that they'd move their German headquarters back to München if they ditched Linux and open source. Microsoft obviously couldn't bribe officials directly, not after Lockheed was caught bribing the West German minister of defense into buying the disastrous F-104 and the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act that was created as direct response to it and number of other times Lockheed had bribed foreign officials to buy their planes. However this way the politicians can boast about bringing high paying jobs to the city and use that to get more votes so it's still essentially a bribe even if money didn't change hands.

Technocrats are not necessarily good officials. A good minister makes good discicions based on the information that's available to him. We have a minister of economy in Belgium that is a doctorandus in economy and he's doing a very poor job.

[bug77]

Sad face.

I wonder what justification they have for spending 50 million on it

As a matter of fact, Linux was working fine for their own needs. The problem was when they needed to communicate with other municipalities or federal bodies, they were being requested to send everything in (wait for it) MS Office compatible format.

To me, this is not a sign of Linux not being up to the task (quite the opposite), but of how strong MS's vendor lock in actually is. I also don't know how well the decision to make their own distro worked out in time.