Qedward writes
"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."
Re:good for them!
By compro01
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2013-Dec-12 15:54
• Score: 5, Informative
• Thread
Warren won't buy Microsoft stock because the entire world would be throwing insider trading accusations at him.
I—well, Microsoft is a special case because Microsoft is off bounds to us because of my friendship with Bill and if we spent seven months buying Microsoft stock and during that period they announced a repurchase or increase of the dividend or an acquisition, people would say you've been getting inside information from Bill. So I have told Todd and Ted and I apply it myself that we do not ever buy a share of Microsoft. I think Microsoft is attractive but that—but we will never buy Microsoft. It—people would just assume I knew something and I don't, but they would assume it and they would assume Bill talked to me and he wouldn't have. But there's no sense putting yourself in that position.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/45290263
Re:Other Motives
By RabidReindeer
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2013-Dec-12 16:04
• Score: 4, Insightful
• Thread
Do we know that they saved money overall? I poked around the article but I couldnâ(TM)t find anything.
You write as though this point is the end of possible cost savings. In the future, there will be no more Windows licenses, no more CALs to buy. No more Office licenses.
More importantly, no (or perhaps fewer) vendor(s) with a lock-in that prevents effective price negotiations and, for those that do have lock-in, a very credible threat that they will be replaced if they refuse to play ball.
Also no tying up tech staff with juggling licenses in fear of the Spanish Inquisition, er software license audits.
Re:Other Motives
By citizenr
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2013-Dec-12 16:27
• Score: 5, Interesting
• Thread
Even if it cost more (and it didnt) all the money would go directly into local economy (IT staff wages) instead of offshore M$ Tax heaven.
Re:Congratulations!
By kenh
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2013-Dec-12 16:28
• Score: 4, Insightful
• Thread
And it only took Munich ten years to upgrade - at that rate Linux will bury Microsoft in just a few years...
This is an interesting "glass is half-empty or half-full" issue:
Linux "advocates" will focus on the "switch completed" part of the story, MS advocates will focus on the TEN YEARS and their "need" to create their own distribution.
No CIO in any organization of any serious size will look at this ten year effort as anything other than justification for their decision to remain on MS software.
This is declaring our dependence on gasoline is almost upon us because one fellow in town just converted his diesel VW Rabbit to run on used cooking oil.
Linux is 20 years old and has less than half the market share of Microsoft Vista... (3.57% v. 1.56%)
Re:Other Motives
By phoenix_rizzen
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2013-Dec-12 17:44
• Score: 5, Interesting
• Thread
We're living proof that it's possible. Local school district, using diskless Linux in every school, roughly 95% of all PCs in the district are running Linux. IT budget is just barely over $100,000/year and that includes hardware and software. 14,000 students in the district, spread across ~10 towns, in 50-odd buildings. Only 14 IT staff, looking after it all.
We pay $0 for the OS and 90-odd% of our apps (we pay for a CAD program, a typing program, and some VC stuff).
Computers are diskless appliances, booting off the network, mounting filesystems off the local server, and running all applications locally. Thus, we get all the centralised management of a thin-client setup, but with all the power of a local computer (apps run on the local CPU, using the local 3D graphics card, pumping audio through the local soundcard, etc). Each one is under $200 CDN, with a quad-core Athlon-II CPU, 2 GB of RAM, and either nVidia or ATi graphics onboard.
They are treated as "disposable" appliances -- if one fails, sent it to maint, grab a spare, plug it in, carry on with your day. Replacement time for a hardware failure is under 15 minutes.
4 service desk staff look after 90% of the software side of things from a central office. 5 school techs look after the other 10% of the software onsite, and hardware issues. Then there's a video conferencing tech, a hardware tech, an electrician, some programmers and managers.
We're using Debian on the servers, FreeBSD on the firewalls and backups servers, and Xubuntu on the desktops. $0/desk.
Oh, did I mention we also have NX installed to allow any student/staff member remote access to their full Linux desktop from anywhere? Try that without licensing fees on Windows. :)
We went from paying several hundred thousand dollars per year in software licensing (Novell Netware, Windows, Office, anti-virus, Ghost, etc, etc, etc) to virtually nothing per year. It's been over 10 years now since we started the transition to Linux (2001), and the savings are HUGE!