City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software
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Every so often this topic comes up, and what is really happening always seems to be in question. From what I can tell, in 2003 the City of Munich decided to be an early adopter of Linux and LibreOffice and move 20,000 city workers from Windows and MS Office over to a proprietary Linux OS that the city made itself. Then, somewhere around 2017 they decided to move back to Windows and MS Office. The proposed move is, from what I can tell, slated for 2020. So at this point has not happened.
At the time, in 2003, it was a big deal that an organization of this size moved to Linux and LibreOffice. Today, they are a tiny player in a field where this is common. They are no longer news worthy and in reality they are not an example of how poorly that could be done. The seem to have handled it poorly and made some really weird decisions, like making their own OS, that made the process not go well.
It appears that the estimates are that the move to Windows will be really bad for them as well.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/04/munich_linux_costs_ownership/
Keep in mind, this is a city using politicians as their CIO. Not an IT department running the city properly. So nothing that they do, not the move to Linux in 2003 nor the move to Windows in 2020 is in any way indicative of rational decision making. It just a democratic system showing how dangerous decision by committee can be.
Bad IT is bad IT, that they use Windows or Linux isn't relevant. We expect the move back to Windows to be a disaster, too. Just because they don't seem to know what they are doing. After fifteen years, this is going to be really painful. That they can't make Linux and LibreOffice work, when countless other cities, governments, companies, organizations do so without any issue tells us that their failings are not in the products chosen, but in training, usage or other in house problem.
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So the status is... another year before anything might even happen. It's all just a threat right now while they find out the budget. It'll be a few years before we find out if they were even willing to try doing it, or if it worked in any way.
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Personally, my guess is that they are in for a shock, big time. After fifteen years, they now have entrenched Linux users. Windows and MS Office normally win because of "familiarity", not because they are easier to use. But this is now 20,000 users who know Linux and LibreOffice rather than Windows and MS Office. So all of the pain you normally associate with going to Linux, is going to exist in reverse. That's going to come as a shock.
Not only that, but Windows 10 and MS Office are very, very different than they were with XP and MS Office 2000, which is what they left. There is going to likely be a huge learning curve here. For IT, for end users, for management.
Both approaches would work just fine.... if IT and the end users knew what they were doing. When IT and end users are bad, no solution is going to work well.
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To be honest, seems like MS lobbying in the works. I bet they gave the politicians a sweet deal and bam who cares about end users
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@Emad-R said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
To be honest, seems like MS lobbying in the works. I bet they gave the politicians a sweet deal and bam who cares about end users
You'd think but the estimates on how much it will cost to go to Windows seems like no deal at all!
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The estimate is around 100m Pounds. For 20K users. That's $6,000 USD per user for the switch over. Even with a new, really nice desktop (not necessary for the move) and Windows 10 license, and MS Office... that's not even remotely that cost. The amount of "it costs so much to manage Windows" in there has to be huge. It's not just the desktop and apps that suddenly have cost, but the number of IT staff you need, the extra tools that you need, etc. all add up.
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@scottalanmiller said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
After fifteen years, they now have entrenched Linux users. Windows and MS Office normally win because of "familiarity", not because they are easier to use.
I wonder how much of the OS is actually visible to them. I would think that they have some antiquated software that they spend all day in.
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@wrx7m said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
@scottalanmiller said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
After fifteen years, they now have entrenched Linux users. Windows and MS Office normally win because of "familiarity", not because they are easier to use.
I wonder how much of the OS is actually visible to them. I would think that they have some antiquated software that they spend all day in.
That would make sense.
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@wrx7m said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
@scottalanmiller said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
After fifteen years, they now have entrenched Linux users. Windows and MS Office normally win because of "familiarity", not because they are easier to use.
I wonder how much of the OS is actually visible to them. I would think that they have some antiquated software that they spend all day in.
Exactly - if they could deploy that crap app via remote desktop somehow - they could likely just move to Chromebooks.
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@Dashrender said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
@wrx7m said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
@scottalanmiller said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
After fifteen years, they now have entrenched Linux users. Windows and MS Office normally win because of "familiarity", not because they are easier to use.
I wonder how much of the OS is actually visible to them. I would think that they have some antiquated software that they spend all day in.
Exactly - if they could deploy that crap app via remote desktop somehow - they could likely just move to Chromebooks.
If they could... of if they would. Hard to say. They could do VDI or RDS (or XenApp.) Lots of options. And maybe they are. But where does all of that cost come from!
If they were able to do RDS... they could keep the Linux desktops now, actually. No changes needed.
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@scottalanmiller said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
@Dashrender said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
@wrx7m said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
@scottalanmiller said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
After fifteen years, they now have entrenched Linux users. Windows and MS Office normally win because of "familiarity", not because they are easier to use.
I wonder how much of the OS is actually visible to them. I would think that they have some antiquated software that they spend all day in.
Exactly - if they could deploy that crap app via remote desktop somehow - they could likely just move to Chromebooks.
If they could... of if they would. Hard to say. They could do VDI or RDS (or XenApp.) Lots of options. And maybe they are. But where does all of that cost come from!
If they were able to do RDS... they could keep the Linux desktops now, actually. No changes needed.
It is the government, so, probably are overpaying by quite a large margin.
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@wrx7m said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
@scottalanmiller said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
@Dashrender said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
@wrx7m said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
@scottalanmiller said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
After fifteen years, they now have entrenched Linux users. Windows and MS Office normally win because of "familiarity", not because they are easier to use.
I wonder how much of the OS is actually visible to them. I would think that they have some antiquated software that they spend all day in.
Exactly - if they could deploy that crap app via remote desktop somehow - they could likely just move to Chromebooks.
If they could... of if they would. Hard to say. They could do VDI or RDS (or XenApp.) Lots of options. And maybe they are. But where does all of that cost come from!
If they were able to do RDS... they could keep the Linux desktops now, actually. No changes needed.
It is the government, so, probably are overpaying by quite a large margin.
That would be my guess... I really can't believe they are including hiring dozens of additional people in that cost... but what do I know.
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@Dashrender said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
@wrx7m said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
@scottalanmiller said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
@Dashrender said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
@wrx7m said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
@scottalanmiller said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
After fifteen years, they now have entrenched Linux users. Windows and MS Office normally win because of "familiarity", not because they are easier to use.
I wonder how much of the OS is actually visible to them. I would think that they have some antiquated software that they spend all day in.
Exactly - if they could deploy that crap app via remote desktop somehow - they could likely just move to Chromebooks.
If they could... of if they would. Hard to say. They could do VDI or RDS (or XenApp.) Lots of options. And maybe they are. But where does all of that cost come from!
If they were able to do RDS... they could keep the Linux desktops now, actually. No changes needed.
It is the government, so, probably are overpaying by quite a large margin.
That would be my guess... I really can't believe they are including hiring dozens of additional people in that cost... but what do I know.
They likely are. They will need them most likely. And the number is so large as to cover it.
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It's like one IT guy for every eight end users!
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@scottalanmiller said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
It's like one IT guy for every eight end users!
#ITHeaven
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It looks like the whole issue was due to their use of some weird distro years ago.
That article technically doesn't say why they need Windows now, so for all I know they have some new weird requirements I don't know about, but assuming they don't, I think the decision to go to Windows is a horrible idea. They'd be much better off going to Ubuntu instead.
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IIRC Microsoft moved their EU headquarters, or at least their German Headquarters, to Munich not too long ago. At the time they first started talking about moving back to Windows.
It wasn't that this project was a failure, although using their own Linux OS probably was, it was that there was a ton of money invested by Microsoft and they are now seeing the return.
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@Obsolesce said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
It looks like the whole issue was due to their use of some weird distro years ago.
Definitely a HUGE factor. What crazy city would do something so dumb? Clearly they didn't do this in a serious way.
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@scottalanmiller said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
@Obsolesce said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
It looks like the whole issue was due to their use of some weird distro years ago.
Definitely a HUGE factor. What crazy city would do something so dumb? Clearly they didn't do this in a serious way.
ok, not city, but country - china is or was talking about it.
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@Dashrender said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
@scottalanmiller said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
@Obsolesce said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
It looks like the whole issue was due to their use of some weird distro years ago.
Definitely a HUGE factor. What crazy city would do something so dumb? Clearly they didn't do this in a serious way.
ok, not city, but country - china is or was talking about it.
China does it for very different reasons. And totally makes sense.
- Over a billion users, compared to 20,000.
- Built for home use, as well as work use. A universal product.
- Made available to all people, everywhere. It's a full distro and one of the biggest.
- Done specifically to provide a "Chinese Native" language platform that renders Chinese writing first because other major distros focus on Latin which renders differently. It was needed to handle the needs of the ethnic group. German writes in Latin and all normal distros are already set up for Munich.
