[Vision2020] How Munich rejected Steve Ballmer and kicked Microsoft out of the city

[Scott Dredge]

Interesting story.  It took Munich a full decade to implement this.  I switched over to Apple OSX about 6 years years ago first on MacBook Pro and iMac and then on a MacAir.  Microsoft actually made the transition quite easy by supporting their Office suite on Mac.  I've recently upgraded to OSX Mavericks and bought the competing Apple products for $19.99 each from the App Store (Pages, Numbers, Keynote which are respectively Word, Excel, and Powerpoint).  I also tried Open Office and Google Docs a couple of years ago but didn't find them too much to my liking.  I still think Microsoft is doing some things extremely well and I wish them continued success.  I hope they choose a world class CEO who is exactly the right fit for them.  And I found Microsoft Windows 7, which I ran under Parallels on my MacAir, to be a very nice operating system.

Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2013 08:47:00 -0800
From: kmmos1 at frontier.com
To: vision2020 at moscow.com
Subject: [Vision2020] How Munich rejected Steve Ballmer and kicked Microsoft out of the city


  

    
  
  
    How Munich rejected Steve Ballmer and kicked Microsoft out of the
    city

    

    Breaking up with Microsoft is hard to do. Just ask Peter Hofmann,
    the man leading the City of Munich's project to ditch Windows and
    Office in favour of open source alternatives.

    

    http://tinyurl.com/loehwz6 

    

    Munich says the move to open source has saved it more than €10m, a
    claim contested
      by Microsoft, yet Hofmann says the point of making the switch
    was never about money, but about freedom.

    

    "If you are only doing a migration because you think it saves you
    money there's always somebody who tells you afterwards that you
    didn't calculate it properly," he said.

    

    "That was the experience of a lot of open source-based projects that
    have failed," Hofmann noted. They were only cost-driven and when the
    organisation got more money or somebody else said 'The costs are
    wrong' then the main reason for doing it had broken away. That was
    never the main goal within the City of Munich. Our main goal was to
    become independent."

    

    

    <[Much more article, with Munich photographs, on the web
    page]>  http://tinyurl.com/loehwz6 

    

    

    Now that the migration to LiMux is complete, Munich plans to
    continue developing LiMux (the next version is due out in summer
    2014) and continue to incorporate changes made to the Ubuntu LTS
    release it's based upon. The authority will also continue to
    identify opportunities to migrate other apps to run on the LiMux
    client so it can further reduce its Microsoft footprint.

    

    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."We saw from the start that if you're only relying on
    one  contributor to supply your operating system, your office system
    and your infrastructure, you're stuck with it. You have to do what
    your contributor tells you to. If they say 'There's no longer
    support for your office version', you have to buy and implement a
    new one. You're no longer able to make those kinds of decisions by
    yourself."
    He is hopeful that Munich will show other large organisations
      that it is possible to make the jump to free software and, while
      it is a difficult and time-consuming process, making it happen
      doesn't mean shutting down your IT.

    "It's the best thing you can do. I've been asked 'How come you
      say you're up and running when Microsoft says you're already
      dead'," he said.

    Hofmann's response: "It is possible to do an open source
      migration and still have the citizens not left alone. We're far
      from being dead."

    

    Ken

  


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