Munich shifts to LibreOffice

[henke54]

October 17, 2012, 8:28 AM — The city of Munich, which has long been a big user for Linux and open source software, has shifted its migration-to-OpenOffice plans and is now starting to deploy LibreOffice instead.

That's the news from The Document Foundation's Italo Vignoli, who touted the announcement as part of a cheerleading roundup on the Foundation's mailing list today.

"'After a careful risk-assessment, Munich city council has

decided to migrate to LibreOffice. In favour of that decision, among others, was the greater flexibility of the project regarding consumption of open source licenses. In addition, Munich wants to rely on a large and vibrant community for any Open Source product it employs,' says Kirsten Böge, head of public relations," Vignoli reported.

Not to rain on LibreOffice's parade, but I have a question: how frickin' long does it take for one city to migrate to a new office suite? Because, no offense to Munich's IT department, there's been reports of Munich trying to migrate to Linux and OpenOffice since at least 2003.

Now, I realize that there was some drama in those early days, with Microsoft stepping in and offering discounts to keep Munich's business, so I can understand the delays. But c'mon, nine years later and we're still migrating to an open source office suite? What the heck is going on?

It is not at all clear, by the way, what stage the migration is in. In 2010, folks from Munich's IT department went to CeBIT to report on the shift, but the event coverage isn't clear whether this was an after-action report or an in-progress report. So I will right now concede that all my caterwauling may be moot.

But still, it seems like Munich is always moving to open source. It seems that the move is good for them, but when will they get there?

Focusing on the Document Foundation's announcement, it's not much of a surprise that the city is moving from OpenOffice to LibreOffice. LibreOffice is perceived to be moving faster in development right now and, frankly, you can't really underplay the importance of a German city feeling better about using software coordinated by a German non-profit rather than an American one. Germans have always had a soft spot for homegrown software, as far back as StarOffice.

According to Vignoli, Munich is not the only government taking a closer look at LibreOffice.

"Just before the city of Munich, a similar announcement was made by the French Prime Minister, who mentioned LibreOffice as a pillar in the overall migration of free software of all government bodies," Vignoli wrote. "MimO, the technology group taking care of the migration project, has already certified LibreOffice as the free office suite of choice."

It's good to hear that open source software is getting so much public attention.

I just hope it gets installed before I have to retire.

http://www.itworld.com/it-managementstr ... ibreoffice

[Villeroy]

Not to rain on LibreOffice's parade, but I have a question: how frickin' long does it take for one city to migrate to a new office suite?

Munich is free of proprietary software. They ported each and every product including the operating systems and rewrote many of their own solutions.

[henke54]

In the mailing list post, Vignoli also mentions other public bodies migrating to LibreOffice, including the Capital Region of Denmark, the city of Limerick in Ireland, Grygov in the Czech Republic, Las Palmas in Spain, Largo in Florida, the municipality of Pilea-Hortiatis in Greece and the Public Library System of Chicago.

[henke54]

Munich is free of proprietary software. They ported each and every product including the operating systems and rewrote many of their own solutions.

Over €10 million (approximately £8 million or $12.8 million) has been saved by the city of Munich, thanks to its development and use of the city's own Linux platform. The calculation of savings follows a question by the city council's independent Free Voters (Freie Wähler) group, which led to Munich's municipal LiMux project presenting a comparative budget calculation at the meeting of the city council's IT committee on Wednesday. The calculation compares the current overall cost of the LiMux migration with that of two technologically equivalent Windows scenarios: Windows with Microsoft Office and Windows with OpenOffice. Reportedly, savings amount to over €10 million.

[henke54]

Munich is free of proprietary software. They ported each and every product including the operating systems and rewrote many of their own solutions.

Now that Munich is on a path to freeing itself from proprietary ties, Hofmann says he sees no compelling reason for the authority to ever go back.

http://www.techrepublic.com/article/how ... -the-city/

[/a3]

On the topic of Munich, this news story was posted a few days ago:
http://www.cio.co.uk/news/change-manage ... cessfully/

Munich open source switch 'completed successfully'

Munich's switch to open source software has been successfully completed, with the vast majority of the public administration's users now running its own version of Linux, city officials said today.

In one of the premier open source software deployments in Europe, the city migrated from Windows NT to LiMux, its own Linux distribution. LiMux incorporates a fully open source desktop infrastructure. The city also decided to use the Open Document Format (ODF) as a standard, instead of proprietary options.

Ten years after the decision to switch, the LiMux project will now go into regular operation, the Munich City council said in a document published on its website.

As of November last year, the city saved more than €11.7 million because of the switch. More recent figures were not immediately available, but cost savings were not the only goal of the operation. It was also done to be less dependent on manufacturers, product cycles and proprietary OSes, the council said.

"All project objectives were achieved and in some cases even exceeded," the council said. One of the goals was to migrate 12,000 desktops to LiMux, but in the end, the city managed to create over 14,800 LiMux workspaces for its approximately 15,500 desktops.

...

[henke54]

IS MUNICH TURNING BACK TO MICROSOFT-SHIT ??? :

16. August 2014 16:01
Münchner Stadtverwaltung Von Microsoft zu Linux und zurück

http://www.sueddeutsche.de/muenchen/mue ... -1.2090611

[crusader]

I am wondering what the real reason is...

[henke54]

I am wondering what the real reason is...

hmmmm .... :

But Schmidt's comments have already been derided (translated from the German) as appeasements to Microsoft, specifically since the company is already doing a migration of its own: It's moving its German headquarters to Munich, and expects to be operational there by Summer 2016.

http://www.fierceenterprisecommunicatio ... 2014-08-18

http://www.muenchen.de/rathaus/Stadtver ... stich.html

http://www.linux-magazin.de/NEWS/Micros ... ung-finden

http://www.heise.de/open/meldung/Linux- ... 62506.html

[crusader]

Henke54, thank you for championing ODF and sharing ODF related news (the uptake aspect is of particular interest to me).

But Schmidt's comments have already been derided (translated from the German) as appeasements to Microsoft, specifically since the company is already doing a migration of its own: It's moving its German headquarters to Munich, and expects to be operational there by Summer 2016.

This partly explains Munich's "desperation;" however, I have a feeling this is not the whole story. This comes on the heels of UK's announcement that ODF will be the official documents standard. Interesting...