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

[Nth_man]

Nice!
Though your GendBuntu link also points to the OpenDocument page on Wikipedia.

It would be:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GendBuntu

Also useful:
https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/news/fre...merie-open-sou
http://www.zdnet.com/french-police-m...nux-7000021479

I read many comments here presuming that the reason to switch back to Windows was compatibility problems with Microsoft Office. Does anyone know if there is licence restriction or anything like that which forbids to run Microsoft Office on GNU/Linux? I personally have Microsoft Office 2010 installed at work on my Ubuntu since 2014 using Wine, and it is working very well. Why can't Munich do that?

They would have to arrange for a support contract with somebody like codeweavers for that to work and I am not 100% sure that license they were getting from MS would even allow that. You can't really run software on wine in business world, there are bunch of problems with it.

On the other hand, increasingly locked MS ecosystem is pulling people in - governments get significant discounts, education gets free licenses so that they can lock in students into their ecosystem. I find it surprising that they would actually go back from Linux tho, after they got trough initial jump (teaching people to use open office and stuff), spending equal ammount of money on teaching people to work on windows must be somewhat painfull (even though less than the other way around because majority of people used windows at some point).

[Flaburgan]

I read many comments here presuming that the reason to switch back to Windows was compatibility problems with Microsoft Office. Does anyone know if there is licence restriction or anything like that which forbids to run Microsoft Office on GNU/Linux? I personally have Microsoft Office 2010 installed at work on my Ubuntu since 2014 using Wine, and it is working very well. Why can't Munich do that?

[F.Ultra]

Point made was no one really gives a rip what the OS is anymore. That was the connection to the story. The surface may call it politics, the rest of us just say so what. As long as Munich gets what they need, who cares? Just look for the next opportunity.

So no one cares what the OS is anymore so much that they must switch to Windows 10? So Windows 10 is the new OS agnostic now or something? No your story one says that you and the people you work with does not care. Lot's of other people care.

[OneBitUser]

As usual i read comments like "linux not adapted for desktop usage in a large organisation". "Not for civil servants or corporate idiots" etc etc... Or "OMG ! How do we make non microsoft technology behave like it was a microsoft technology ? "

Well, the French Gendarmerie (militarized police) ditched microsoft alltogether. 82 000 computers. Desktop usage. A small summary here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GendBuntu

How do they obtain word format compatibility ? They don't. The made the OpendDocument format their standard. That is called making choices. They do not use Outlook, nor Active Directory. Photoshop neither. They use GIMP too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument

It proves that competent people can and will do it.

Nice!
Though your GendBuntu link also points to the OpenDocument page on Wikipedia.

[Dedale]

As usual i read comments like "linux not adapted for desktop usage in a large organisation". "Not for civil servants or corporate idiots" etc etc... Or "OMG ! How do we make non microsoft technology behave like it was a microsoft technology ? "

Well, the French Gendarmerie (militarized police) ditched microsoft alltogether. 82 000 computers. Desktop usage. A small summary here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GendBuntu

How do they obtain word format compatibility ? They don't. They made the OpendDocument format their standard. That is called making choices. They do not use Outlook, nor Active Directory. Photoshop neither. They use GIMP too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument

It proves that competent people can and will do it.

[OneBitUser]

"Munich was going back in bed with Microsoft"

The butthurt is strong with this one. An unbiased statement would be like "Munich goes from Linux' bed to Microsoft's". Also, how has your Macbook been working out for ya, Michael? I guess you're going to bed with Apple, then? What the hell. You can require manual approval on my comments, won't make you less of a hypocrite.

If you want to know how real butthurt looks like, well, your comment is a shining example of it! You do not get into bed with open-source products that you modify according to your own whims and then try to support yourself.
You can, however get into bed with companies that you have close personal and business ties to, based on a biased study.

"Reasons cited were adoption and users being unhappy with the lack of software available for Linux."

So yeah, this happens when you make business decisions based on your personal preferences instead of your "company's" needs. It wasn't even clear what problem they were trying to solve.

It is a result of poor planning and execution, not personal preferences... Necessary software infrastructure is not something you should be looking for after a switch like this.

"The reason for the migration was the end of support for Windows NT 4 by Microsoft in late 2003; thus a replacement of it was necessary."

Like no sh*t, upgrades are necessary for software? Instead of buying upgrade licenses, they could spend money on rebasing LiMux to newer Ubuntu/Debian releases.

They could have made the much more logical decision to stick with Debian/CentOS/Ubuntu LTS, and do necessary configuration via scripts.
Easy, simple, elegant, quick... not to mention it would have had near 0 development cost... which is in stark contrast with the upgrade cost of a Microsoft-based ecosystem consisting of tens of thousands of machines.

Also, "get rid of Microsoft" is not a problem that needs to be solved, that's just personal hatred, not a business goal.

It is a realistic business goal and a huge problem: MS is trying to lock down the whole market and dictate the terms... which is only good for them, not their customers. So yes, those customers are right to try and make a dent in Microsoft's shining business plans. You would be right in this point if MS was mandated to support open document standards so they would not force a vendor-lock on their customers.
The overreliance on Microsoft products also paved the way for MS switching most of their software to a SAAS model. Which is a huge cost increase over time for enterprises/governments who often rely on the same software versions for quite a long time.

It was also unproven and unverifiable that they would actually spare some money with Linux and LibreOffice. They "saved" 12m EUR by switching to OSS, but at the same time, the project cost 14m and took 10 friggin' years of work. Whoa, that's some serious savings indeed.

The current switch back to Microsoft products is unquestionable proof that LiMux was a lot cheaper for München than upgrading their systems to newer MS products in 2003...
The project did cost 14 million €, but as you see, the current switch back to MS costs almost three times that amount, and that is not including support and software subscription fees over the years. By the time the switch is done, München will have spent 5-6-7 times more on the MS ecosystem than they did on the whole LiMux project...
Your tax euros, hard at work!

Morale of the story: don't make decisions with emotions. That's not how it works. That's not how any of this works.

But apparently, yes, that is how this works. A gets elected mayor, and orders a study from C, to prove that A's friend B's product is the best... so C --who is by some astronomical coincidence a dependent of B-- proves just that. If you do not see anything wrong with that, then please, disregard my whole comment altogether.

[L_A_G]

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.

The thing about expert-run organizations is that the experts that run them are generally replaced based on performance, not internal and external politics (i.e the ability to get re-elected). In a properly managed technocracy your minister would have been fired for his/her (don't follow belgian politics) incompetence.

[CrystalGamma]

The only solution for it is that the Federal goverment or the senate mandates that all communications among public administrations in the whole country be made in a vendor neutral open standard such as OpenDocument.

IIRC, there is such a law, but administrations just ignore it …

[OneBitUser]

Sad face.

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

München's switch to Linux was very poorly carried out, in my opinion.
They had a terrible system to manage, as they never fully transitioned to Linux and did not use a major vanilla distribution.
They had Ubuntu-based LiMux machines as well as Windows XP, Vista, and 7 boxes... seems like a nightmare to administrate and support such an IT infrastructure.

München arguably would have been much better off if they had just stuck to a pure Ubuntu LTS or CentsOS system, say with a simple pre-configured ISO with all necessary configuration included, distributable via their network.

So there are some objective reasons for the switch, but not near enough.
Still, one of their current city leaders (AFAIR the mayor) actually does have close ties with Microsoft.
A part of the explanation the new city leadership has given was the MS Office document incompatibility that made it difficult for them to interact with other government divisions... open document formats should be mandatory in any and all government offices, seeing that they are available free-of-charge,

By the way, the 50.000.000€ mentioned here only covers the cost of the switch. By the time München has completed the switch, they will have additionally paid Microsoft about the same sum for support fees and software subscriptions.