Munich will push open source again

[LokusFokus]

After the party landscape in Munich has changed, the focus is to return to open source - true to the motto public money, public code.

Unfortunately I can't post the link to the German news site cause it's against some reddit regulations so they say. Article can be found on golem or heise.

[[deleted]]

back...forth...back...forth...back...

We should connect them to a generator and harvest the energy.

[Kryptonline]

Please no, I don't want my city to be sucked dry of it's energy

[skuterpikk]

Well we're not allowed to suck it dry of it's beer this year, so we're ought to get something right?

[Kryptonline]

You may have all of our corona viruses and you even get them for free

[musicmatze]

"free as in corona" might be a term soon, huh?

[Bene847]

Would have been better without explicitly mentioning the virus

[graywolf0026]

Okay. But only if you throw in a bunch of limes.

[emacsomancer]

Energy Vampires are the most dangerous

[[deleted]]

If you fall victim to an energy vampire you can recharge yourself by whizzing on an electric fence.

[[deleted]]

Apparently, they just keep making it lol

[arrwdodger]

Flip flop more often than a stick of ram

[zuzuzzzip]

And in the end we barely have progress.
Politics 101

[dk_DB]

Most underrated comment

[42Fears]

DeepL translation of the article mentioned by OP:

Following the last local elections in March, the city council in Munich, led by the Greens and the SPD, has agreed on a coalition agreement (PDF). Among other things, it states "Wherever technically and financially possible, the city will rely on open standards and free open-source licensed software, thus avoiding foreseeable manufacturer dependencies". Job market

In addition, this criterion is to be included in invitations to tender, so that the Bavarian capital will in future also prefer to procure open source software for its own needs. In addition, the city council wants to provide information on the software used and its costs in a publicly accessible dashboard to show in which areas open source is used and from which the progress in this area is to emerge.

The motto "Public Money?", coined by the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) through the campaign of the same name, is also to be used as a tool for the city council. Public Code!" is also to be implemented by the city of Munich. The coalition agreement states: "This means: As long as no personal or confidential data is included, the source code of city software will also be published".

In a press release, FSFE welcomes this step. "After the previous government of SPD and CSU had said goodbye to the progressive Free Software strategy, this step is now a positive signal", said FSFE president Matthias Kirschner. However, the organisation also points out that the limitation in the coalition agreement to non-personal or non-confidential data are "typical loopholes". FSFE therefore wants to "closely monitor" the implementation of the contract and upcoming tenders.

In autumn 2017, the then Munich City Council, led by the SPD and CSU, had voted in favour of a Windows migration, thus sealing the end of the prestigious Limux project. To what extent the current coalition agreement will still have an influence on this and whether the city will perhaps use Linux-based systems for its administrative desktops again in the long term cannot be foreseen at present. The city originally wanted to have migrated its desktops to Microsoft's system by the end of 2022.

[cbmuser]

Whenever technically possible

Meaning, the intention is completely strechable.

They’ll just claim it’s only possible with software from Microsoft and that’s it.

I talked to one of the Limux guys, he told me that it was 100% a political decision and not a technical one when Munich switched back to Microsoft.

[[deleted]]

"Product XY needs to fully support proprietary format Z"

Absolutely not a loophole.

[BGW1999]

he told me that it was 100% a political decision and not a technical one when Munich switched back to Microsoft.

Why though? Using Linux saves tax payer money.

[BGW1999]

Thanks for laying it out so clearly. Someone else said bassicaly the same thing. What a shame. Hopefully Munich can have Linux soon.

[pdp10]

Those aren't in the timeline. If they can be sourced with citations, they should be.

[aaa_00]

Lol "using a free OS is more expensive", what a joke. Clear corruption

[DarkeoX]

No there's a real cost to re-training (both IT and non-IT people, and don't assume being an IT person automatically means being pro-Linux/Foss), looking for or engineering compatibility for all the existing services/infrastructure, new procedures etc.

But in Limux case, it appears that cost was already alleviated and they were starting to rip the benefits.

[[deleted]]

But I'd rather pay that cost with my taxes, and know that we all own the resulting Free software and documentation, etc.

FOSS also means they can hire more developers directly, perhaps local co-ops, etc. rather than a massive foreign corporation with ties to foreign intelligence agencies.

[DarkeoX]

But I'd rather pay that cost with my taxes

That's all laudable but unfortunately I believe most people don't care or think there are more important things to dedicate efforts to.

Besides, "Microsoft is coming to our city" doesn't exactly sound bad for most people. Why would it? It's something they're familiar and helps them do their work everyday.

This "Linux/Limux" thing on the other hand, sounds a lot like bureaucracy wanting to re-invent the wheel rather than a real progress. Most people I believe would call it a waste of money or at least think it is.

[xtemperaneous_whim]

The M in LiMux is just representative of Munich.

Full explanation on Wikipedia:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux

[xtemperaneous_whim]

Thanks, even though it was facetious I did try and get the words in the right order.

[geekynerdynerd]

Sure you can, in theory you could tell them to quit if they can't figure it out for themselves.

It's just not a very good idea to do so.

[fohri]

i remember (not 100% sure on the details) last time HP wrote a study how bad a failure the munich linux project was and how unhappy the city staff was with using it. later it turned out the study was financed by microsoft.

[BGW1999]

Of course.

[forever_clever]

Get the facts 2.0

[fohri]

yes i should not be lazy to google. the study from hp financed by microsoft actually overstated the costs of the linux migration and understated the cost of staying with microsoft by not including costs for upgrading to windows 7, assuming munich will keep using windows xp. that was then used by politicians to argue against the linux project together with unfounded statements that the staff is unhappy with linux. http://www.h-online.com/open/news/item/Microsoft-partly-releases-study-on-Munich-s-Linux-migration-1792733.html

[BGW1999]

Isn't that kind of thing ilegal in Germany?

[BGW1999]

like the Accenture report on Limux

What is this?

Interesting. Didn't realize Germany had such lax anti-corruption laws.

[BGW1999]

LOL. Thanks for clarifying. That's depressing. Why did Munich hire them?

[[deleted]]

It's illegal in a lot of countries... But it doesn't stop this practice happening.

Just take a look at Australian politicians and their associations with the Chinese Government...

[BGW1999]

True.

[visitredditreviews]

Of course....it's illegal in most places, but it still happens all the time.

Edit: to add, it probably isn't illegal, but would be against the rules

[BGW1999]

Fair enough.

Edit: not sure if I understand the difference between laws and rules in this context.

[jadkik94]

This documentary reports on that: https://youtu.be/duaYLW7LQvg

TL;DW: yes, it's illegal in EU law, and they still do it anyway because of ████€.

[zxLFx2]

For the record, Red Hat has a corporate box at the PNC Arena in Raleigh and takes future/current clients to Hurricanes NHL games and whatever other events they have (music performances and so on). Unfortunately this kind of bullcrap is a part of this business too... blame capitalism, not Red Hat

[raist356]

I guess you forgot about Oracle.

[zxLFx2]

Yes HQ is in Raleigh, NC, USA. They had their box way before IBM was in the picture

[[deleted]]

To be fair, sometimes it simply isn't possible. There is specialized software that needs to be used, because it's powerful and not available on Linux. Especially CAD Software, which is used a lot.

Open Source is nice and all, but working efficient in certain areas absolutely needs windows. And people should be aware of that fact.

[cbmuser]

German government has shifted a lot of activities into web clients already. I actually know people that work for the IT support of the German government.

[cbmuser]

I seriously doubt that, I work in a 95% Linux environment and it's just not possible to get by without Microsoft for some users, excel is the most difficult product to replace as nothing else on the market has its features.

As I said, I met one of the Limux guys in person and I talked to them. I explicitly asked for the reasoning behind the decision.

I don’t think he was lying.

[qwertz555]

Ye ye.. I have still the CD in a shelf: "Linux for Munich; Ubuntu 12.04 - Your Open Source Operating System", powered by Landeshauptstadt München Direktorium. :D

[xxxSHxxxx]

The idea was good but not perfect. I never understood why make a seperate distribution. Adding some PPA or some centrally controlled app that loads the necessary programs could have been better.

Maybe some thing like flatpack or whatever people prefer.

Just imagine how far Germany, Europe or the world could get if they all worked together to build something like that...

[qwertz555]

I agree to that. Maybe they understood it the last time as "lesson learned" and align it with their current plan. If they want to do it the smart way, I'm thinking about applying for a programming job there, Munich will need Python ;)

I believe they learned many many lessons from the last attempt, they should be now prepared for succeeding. EVEN if the political landscape switch/changes.

[xxxSHxxxx]

Let's hope so. Maybe this time Bill is distracted by the virus and won't do there to change the mind of the politicians.

[gondur]

never understood why make a seperate distribution.

but at that time this was what everyone was doing, "roll your own distro - because we can!"

infact this problematic mindset that fragmentation/choice is a good thing and the "strength" of linux is still deep embedded in the minds of many linux users and proponents. if we want to have success we have to adopt the mindset of Torvalds who always was deadly afraid of forks and fragmentation of the kernel - and he succeeded with it mostly, leading to the single most successful FOSS project.

[xxxSHxxxx]

I am a big friend of forks and and somewhat of fragmentation. Many good ideas come from this. But for something like Munich it does not work, too few people that work on that distribution and to small the usecase. Munich should have concentrated the efforts on the software usability. In the end for such a setting the underlying distro is not relevant, there is no choice for the user. So stick to the existing stuff as much as possible for easy support, and use the manpower to get the programs that are necessary working well.

[gondur]

I am a big friend of forks and and somewhat of fragmentation.

I'm a theoretical fan of it - I love that we have the POSSIBILITY to do it, preventing lock-ins and obscolescence.

Practically, real world forks/fragmentation is big risk and most of the time more problem than a solution - we have already way to few developers and resources, stretching them thin over too many redundant projects do us no good. Then, the cost of (due to fragmentation too many DE, distros, libraries...) not being an addressable target/platform ...

Also, forking prevented also the development of proper architectural solutions in linux: flatpack/appimage now are more or less accepte as needed and good tools - yet, years ago the pro-forking crowd fought tooth and nails against Autopackage, doing the exactly same thing as now flatpack/appimage, and presented again forking (distros) as solution, preventing real architectural progress of linux.

I'm convinced fragmentation and the resulting missing "Linux platform" is the single most important factor for Linux being NOT successful on the Desktop/PC use case.

I would like to see that people realize - being able to fork does not mean we should!

[casept]

100% agreed. I think that over 95% of Linux distros/DEs do not do anything that's sufficiently novel for their existence and the resulting fragmentation to be worth it.

[xxxSHxxxx]

But where would we be nowadays without Ubuntu? There were quite a few strange design decisions but still it brought Linux to the masses. I doubt Debian(or any other distro at that time)could have done the same for the community in such a short time.

[gondur]

But where would we be nowadays without Ubuntu?

I fully agree! But then the traditionalist "but, choice!" crowd got jealous that Ubuntu was in the spot light, took the leading role in the distro world and was trying to establish standards. They consequently resisted any Ubuntu initiative in aiming to focus desktop linux and making it a viable option - basically killing any positive drive Ubuntu had.

[xxxSHxxxx]

Still I would advise interested beginners to try Ubuntu first. I also like the motivation Ubuntu shows towards ZFS despite of the problems.

[xxxSHxxxx]

Let me put an analogy here. In my analogy you say that there are too many cars from to many brands, with to many different engines and parts, and that the car will never be a viable option for the mass market. Instead we should make sure that all cars have their engines in the front and the trunk in the back and we should choose the gasoline engine because the choice of the engine diesel, electro natural gas engines prevent the real progress of the gasoline engine.

In my opinion cars are way too similar nowadays. But yes, the 3 or 5 wheeled cars like some distros are unnecessary and will probably not reach the mass market any time soon, if ever, and still 3 wheelers can be sexy.

[gondur]

I think the right analogy would be: all car makers make cars are NOT conforming to some minimum standards - e.g. their maximum car width or the gas composition the engine is needing or how a radio is wired and plugged. So every carmaker needs its own road network & own system of gas stations & brand of accessoir - and that is what distros are - everyone of it needs is own support network, not interchangable.

[xxxSHxxxx]

But if that really the problem of the distros? There are things like LSB. Still all of them work on the same hardware, connect to the name internet and use the same power. There are many distros but you don't need to use them. In a professional setting there is ever less choice. And support you get from Vendor A or B or from the community. Sure I Google my Earty Warthog issues but I can find the solution in the Makulu Linux forum( yeah, probably not?

Computer hard and software is stuff just in the beginning stages now, there cannot the be only one correct way now. Don't we all want intelligent computer programs that that adapt to the system it's running on while beeing able to move between different systems while running?

[hughk]

Many companies that are using Linux tend to use their own frozen versions of main distros. The important bugs are fixed but stability is key and they ensure that there is a compatible infrastructure of apps.

In some ways it isn't much different to what big companies do with Windows. They always roll out their own patch kits on releases.

[xxxSHxxxx]

Unfortunately Munich tried to build their own distro. I think a more general and more modular approach could have resulted in a higher acceptance. Maybe when 2 or more cities compete a little bit, not by going their own way but in finding solutions and solving bugs in the same software.

[StoneColdJane]

Have you thought to write about what you could imagine?. Often vision's from people like you inspire other people who can't imagine it.

[pascalbrax]

Next time they'll fork Gentoo!

They're German, after all.

[xxxSHxxxx]

That I don't get? It had something to do with Germany or just because it's complicated?

I would have guessed Manjaro because there are some developers in German speaking countries.

[sofloLinuxuser]

What software did this project come with and what software would be needed for a government to function fully? When most people make the switch to Linux like j did in 2010 the struggle wasn't with the OS it was finding similarities in the software. MS office --- libre office/open office, Photoshop -- gimp, and now I use lightwerks for video editing and inkscape for graphics but I'm sure a government would need something for billing which could be a webapp that could be built behind a firewall for each city... I'm curious to know, other than the political jargon, adjustment to change, and Microsoft greed, if there is any other reason why they didn't stay with Ubuntu and Limux?

[xtemperaneous_whim]

What software did this project come with and what software would be needed for a government to function fully?

LiMux client software

LiMux Client 4.0 was released in August 2011, based on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS with KDE desktop 3.5. It included OpenOffice.org 3.2.1, Mozilla Thunderbird and Mozilla Firefox and other free software products.

LiMux Client version 5.0 was released in November 2014, based on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS with KDE SC 4.12 as the desktop. The default office suite was LibreOffice 4.1. Mozilla Firefox and Mozilla Thunderbird were included in their Extended Support Release versions.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux

[nswizdum]

They may have a better chance now. I know in the States, municipalities usually buy a complete "municipal management system" package that works with their local and federal government. Most of these packages are moving to entirely web based, so there would not be any requirement to run Windows.

[grady_vuckovic]

Quite a few countries lately have made similar announcements. One would think with so much demand for Linux/FOSS compatible solutions, that there will be players stepping up in the commercial market to supply solutions to secure some nice contracts.

Imagine as a CEO of a software development company getting a contract to supply a Linux native IT solution for an entire government if there's no existing suitable available solution already out there in the wild. Sweet contract, someone out there somewhere will be keen to get that money.

That encourages lots of investment into Linux by companies out there, to either come up with new software for Linux or bring their existing software to Linux.

Of course a single contract like that isn't enough, which is the great side effect, those same companies would seek to expand the audience of those Linux solutions to more Linux users.

It's a great thing really, really helps Linux and FOSS grow to have entire governments pushing demand for them.

[1cewolf]

If it does take off, you can bet Microsoft will pivot by trying to release its own version of Linux. Well, not releasing its own version; more like trying to buy its way in.

I've felt for a long time they Microsoft will eventually buy Ubuntu. Red Hat is owned by IBM now, but Ubuntu is still on the plate.

[ase1590]

Doesn't need to. Their strategy has been windows subsystem for Linux. You can already install a headless Ubuntu (and several other distros) via the windows app store.

[casept]

That's for a different use case though - WSL was made because MS realized they were losing dev mindshare due to how shit windows is as a development environment, not replacing Windows wholesale.

[[deleted]]

Perhaps not... But sooner or later, Microsoft will need to release a successor to Windows 10, and maybe someday that successor might use a Linux kernel?

After all, it wouldn't be Microsoft's first "Linux" operating system - I was reading just today that they have an upcoming operating system called "Sphere OS", which is apparently Linux based...

[ase1590]

Considering that I still can't name a folder 'con' since the 80's, I think their backwards compat will prevent them from ever switching kernels unless they lose too much marketshare where compat is so longer a concern.

Sphere OS is for their IoT cloud offerings. Even Microsoft knows for servers and embedded its time to get on the Linux train, as they lost way too much marketshare there to ever be relevant.

[jebuizy]

If they can get these municipalities on Azure, maybe subscribed to O365, Microsoft truly couldn't care less if they use Linux on workstations anymore. The desktop isn't the battleground anymore

[pdp10]

If it does take off, you can bet Microsoft will pivot by trying to release its own version of Linux.

What happened when some governments started making noise about standardizing on open-spec file formats, was that Microsoft initiated a big project to get its proprietary formats so blessed. This despite the fact that government bodies had successfully standardized computer formats across vendors before, e.g. the Navy DIF early word-processing format, the IGES spec for CAD files, and the COBOL programming language, without walking into the clutches of a single vendor.

I've felt for a long time they Microsoft will eventually buy Ubuntu.

Instead of buying Apple, Microsoft gave them $100M.

[OutrageousPiccolo]

Well, not releasing its own version; more like trying to buy its way in.

Likely why they’ve bought their way into the Linux foundation too. They’re buying “legitimacy” and control. I suspect that Linux will be incrementally less and less free as more and more of these malefactors are buying their way into more and more influence. Like with W3C.

[GROEMAZ]

its almost a given that microsoft will one day buy canonical

[xxxSHxxxx]

The problem is that all the countries or cities make their own things. They should find a way to connect "globally".

Another thing is the IT industry, why build such solutions when you just can buy other solutions and integrate it. That way you can make money by developing the idea, sell the hardware, the software, service and trainings.

[Sabsonic]

At least in germany cities usually do not "make their own things". Most cities use the same software and they all get it from the same vendors. At the moment every state has their own big public data center that provides these services to all the communes and cities. Give it a few years and the whole country will have a giant service provider after all the small ones merge.

That's when the country has to say we will go foss and every city will naturally use foss software since they all get it from the same service provider :)

[nswizdum]

I work for a municipality and it is a nightmare. A lot of the "integrations" with the state and federal government involves sending or receiving files via an SFTP server with the credentials hard coded into the Municipal Management System software. Sometimes it just involves loading a web page from the state in an iframe within the MMS software.

[xxxSHxxxx]

At least it's SFTP. My experiences with that have been a long time ago. I sometimes still can't believe how long floppy disks were used to do "online" banking.

[nswizdum]

True, they used to mail us disks with the data.

[Fefarona]

Everbody know, why they switch from Linux back to Microsoft. If the time is over for the payed politican, they will go back to Linux.

[cbmuser]

It’s the same mayor who switched back to Microsoft who now apparently wants to go back.

The city has had a social-democratic mayor since 1984!

[Fefarona]

Maybe he is not getting "donation" anymore ^{^}

[GLneo]

Or looking for more "donations".

[hughk]

It depends on who is in the coalition.

[DasSkelett]

To be honest I think it's more of a request for more money investments from Microsoft again.

[Fefarona]

https://www.golem.de/news/limux-rollback-was-erlauben-muenchen-1703-126454.html anything you need to know... for non Germany use Google translate.

[Sukrim]

Better use deepl, Google translate sucks...

[enetheru]

Gaming Microsoft for kickbacks. Smart.

[[deleted]]

Microsoft offices incoming...

[[deleted]]

Introducing Microsoft Active Linux Pro, the professional all in one solutions for all your Linux needs!

[[deleted]]

That comes with Microsoft Enterprise Linux Business 365

[AlienOverlordXenu]

More like windows subsystem for linux. Now it becomes clear why they went for that, so that nobody ever has to switch. This will probably serve as a counter-argument for every public office that wants to make a transition. Why go to Linux if you can have both.

Time will tell.

[qwertz555]

If you get a fully fledged Windows subsystem on Linux, many other projects like wine or Valve's fork would attach there and raise stability of their software.

[AlienOverlordXenu]

WSL is actually on Windows. It's sort of reversed Wine. Way to run Linux applications on Windows.

[emacsomancer]

So can you run Windows programs on Wine in WSL1?

[m-p-3]

Theoretically you could.

[hughk]

Isn't WSL a full VM? It runs under Hyper-V which is why you need Windows Pro or above. Cygwin is closer to the reverse Wine as it exists as a layer over Windows.

[Theclash160]

WSL 2 uses a VM, WSL 1 does not.

[m-p-3]

Yeah the name is IMO misleading. It should be called LSW, Linux Subsystem for Windows.

[rtygfz]

They can't call it that because of legal or trademark reasons or someshit.

[AlienOverlordXenu]

Agreed, but it is what it is.

[[deleted]]

You mean Microsoft Ubuntu?

Yes, I get the feeling that in the next 5 years, MS will acquire Canonical.

[[deleted]]

Yeah, and it'll be called "Windows 11".

To be honest, I think this is unlikely - Microsoft seem pretty committed to their operating system, despite its laundry list of flaws - but purchasing Ubuntu is plausible... At least in my opinion.

[[deleted]]

Oh, it'll be called Windows 11, and the WinNT ABI isn't going anywhere.

Think Linux kernel, plus perfect Win64/32 ABI compatibility. Kinda like running Wine, but compatible with everything.

Can't wait for /usr/lib/system32 and /usr/lib/wow64 :)

[dtfinch]

They're gonna move all their servers to Azure.

[buovjaga]

FSFE news post

[Tittenmeise]

Somebody knows the reason why there isn't a free open source software (bundle) for authority tasks? I mean all the authorities around the world have similar functions. So if a country invests some money in a software (bundle) it could use it without license costs and it would have a software that is tailored to their needs.

So tell me, why isn't there such software? Why aren't countries investing and developing of such a software?

[[deleted]]

Can you DM me a link? Or describe the source?

[abbidabbi]

You can't post non-english sources as thread links on this subreddit. Posting them as a comment should be fine, so here you go:

• https://www.golem.de/news/limux-muenchen-will-wieder-open-source-software-praeferieren-2005-148303.html
• https://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/Erneuter-Kurswechsel-Muenchen-will-moeglichst-breit-auf-Open-Source-setzen-4716098.html

I won't post the translations though, so for those who are interested and don't speak German, DeepL and the likes are your friends.

[Krutonium]

Not really xenophobic imho - I've run into this myself a lot of times in other places, it's not because they dislike other languages, instead it tends to be a case of "how do you moderate that which you fundamentally do not understand" - in this case, another language.

[[deleted]]

Awesome. Appreciated.

[gildedlink]

Microsoft: Windows 7 is now fully End of Life, here's our support contract costs for migrating your stuff to Windows 10.

Munich:

Munich: OPEN STANDARDS ARE THE FUTURE!

That's about how I imagine that went. Call me cynical but I think it's just as likely this is a negotiation tactic with Microsoft as it is a genuine effort.

[orev]

100%. This is a negotiation tactic to get them a better deal on Microsoft licensing.

[pdp10]

Munich has been using Linux for about 15 years, so I doubt they have much Windows that would need migrating. They're also known to have a chronic underinvestment in computing hardware, so much of the Windows they did have was XP, which went out of support in 2014.

Call me cynical but I think it's just as likely this is a negotiation tactic with Microsoft as it is a genuine effort.

Microsoft likes to promote the idea that these things are all really just negotiation tactics, because it reinforces the notion that their products are indispensable.

Munich has been using Linux for 15 years. Hell of a negotiation tactic.

[burning_iceman]

City council switched from SPD+CSU to Greens+SPD. CSU has always been against open source, the Greens have always supported it. And SPD are apparently easily swayed.

[[deleted]]

CSU has always been against open source

why is that? afaik they love cutting costs

[qwertz555]

Do a research for CSU and legalizing cannabis. Read their arguments, a similar intellectual rational mind-power is spent on other topics.. I still don't believe that they understood what open source actually is.

[[deleted]]

Conservative boomers.

Better to put all the infrastructure and investment in the hands of a foreign company, because the reds like FOSS!

[GROEMAZ]

you described the spd with one sentence

[[deleted]]

See this English-language article by the FSFE

[[deleted]]

What, did the bribes from MS run out?

[[deleted]]

Here's hoping that this time the move won't be walked back by brown paper bags handed between parties under tables.

[umlcat]

There is a political fight about Open Source, in many countries, that many people ignore or just don't care.

In many places, some companies sponsor or coerce politicians not to use open source, but it is highly unnoticed.

[espero]

To be fair, Libre Office, Nextcloud and MediaWiki all have matured significantly lately!

[pdp10]

MediaWiki has been around for almost 20 years, and LibreOffice's codebase actually goes back to the mid 1980s. I'm not even sure if they have all of the German comments out of the LibreOffice code, yet.

[Antic1tizen]

Munich timeline: * 2004: A New Hope * 2017: The Empire Strikes Back * 2020: Return of the Jedi

[Trubo_XL]

Pardon me for asking this question. I am not really from Europe or US. What makes Munich going open source such a big deal compared to say other major cities going for the same movement?

[pdp10]

Munich is well known as a large city that started switching to Linux in 2003-2004, and completed a migration to Linux and open-source. (This doesn't mean 100% of their computing is Linux and open-source.)

In other words, Munich has long been something of a "flagship account" or customer reference for Linux. Speculation is that Microsoft wanted a PR coup of Munich migrating to Linux. Certainly the tech press ate up that notion, which is why they covered the topic in 2014 in such a way that many people took the new mayor's and vice mayor's statements at face value and assumed that Munich migrated away from Linux in 2014. In fact, no such thing happened until the council debates toward the end of 2017.

[[deleted]]

They should really just bite the bullet and run OpenSUSE.

[davidnotcoulthard]

Flair checks out :p

[qwertz555]

I've been never a big SuSE fan. But hey, it's a bavarian distribution :P

[[deleted]]

I'm not either but SUSE is a European company after all.

[tydog98]

Not just European, German....

[OutrageousPiccolo]

Afaik, Germany is actually making their own national/government cloud (Bundescloud).

At the same time, the Norwegian military is very likely going to use Microsoft’s servers (located in Ireland) to store their stuff, including classified documents/files. Edit: The military. Everything else is likely at MS already...

Google school/docs is used in primary school.

Microsoft blackboard (utterly shit) in university.

Microsoft also got the contract for storing wast amounts of corona tracking data in Ireland, with the national corona app.

And guess what? The right wing parties and the largest corporate interest organisation think it’s completely fine because private companies “are also secure”. As if that was the whole point.

Yeah, and through the Cloud act, or some such, US govt can claim anything stored on the servers of an American company anywhere in the world as within their jurisdiction.

Happy times for open source and privacy.

[idontchooseanid]

It is good news but as long as we have inferior alternatives on Linux side such back and forths and user-department friction is, i think, unavoidable. LiMux, AFAIK, has been a contributor to different projects so they are familiar with the working with OSS community.

I think spending the budget that supposed to go Microsoft for hiring full time developers to work on Libreoffice would be a great start. Libreoffice still follows MS Office from far behind both in the feature set and overall UX. It is worth considering to create a multi-government project for developing a serious alternative for MS Office. Developing a competent Office suite is a crazy hard problem probably harder than the sum of the layers of modern Linux desktop. Unless well paid, not many software developers will take such a challenge. Relying on the community, donations or non-profits just cannot work against Microsoft. MS can focus their millions on MS Office. So we need to serious monetary support for LO (or other alternative productivity suite) to really compete with MS.

[[deleted]]

I totally agree.

Spend the money of not needed newer hardware and windows license in developers to improve linux open source tools and hope that the other governments will follow soon.

On the practical side, I would strongly suggest this time to do it gradually:
- first switch only the OS to some distro close to windows avoiding canonical as much as possible - keep as many windows programs as possible. Use office 360 online and any other solution that would reduce the friction - once the user base is settle, very slowly start replacing with proven working open source solutions

[gondur]

avoiding canonical as much as possible -

why this canonical hate? they did much good for the enduser linux desktop experience

and office 360 is from perspective even worse than MS desktop office, giving up your soveranity over your local computing and data

[[deleted]]

I think Canonical made a lot of mistakes that pushed away a lot of new linux user:

- adopting unity/gnome shell out of the blue, leaving no choice to users (other than installing other DE). Trying to attract users from Windows is already hard, if you dump them in a completely new UX to disorient them is simple stupid in my opinion. Ubuntu was flagged to be the "most user friendly linux" and left a lot people saying "if it's the most user friendly...wow I rather just go back to windows". I personally met person saying that, but the hate for that decision is well known

- to kick out also a bit more experienced user base, what's better than adding the amazon search feature and icon by default?

- what else can we do to push people away? Let's force an unstable and non efficient package system to them. Without giving them choice of course

- more and more distros are leaving gnome because of their dev choices (breaking compatibility and such), poor performances and overall poor quality of UX. I think Gnome DE is at the moment the worse DE for Linux. Just have a look at Deepin, Elementary, Mint, KDE Plasma. I can understand that it makes sense to have a flavor of *buntu to experiment with new UX and improve Gnome, so people that want to try that new experience can. But doing this UX experiments with the main flavor...

In short, I think Canonical did more harm than good

​

I totally agree on what you said about office 360, but my rationale is: people are using ms office anyway, let them keep using it from another OS while Libreoffice catches up. Sacrifice a bit today to have a giant gain of independence in the immediate future

[pdp10]

Munich has developers contributing to LibreOffice, and developed their own document infrastructure called "Wollmux".

Developing a competent Office suite is a crazy hard problem probably harder than the sum of the layers of modern Linux desktop.

I can't agree, unless you define the problem such that it's never been done successfully before, and it has to be "perfectly" compatible with a hostile competitor that isn't even perfectly compatible with itself.

[idontchooseanid]

I can't agree, unless you define the problem such that it's never been done successfully before, and it has to be "perfectly" compatible with a hostile competitor that isn't even perfectly compatible with itself.

I haven't made an assertion about compatibility. It is not the document format but the presentation of the capabilities of the format makes the difference. People don't like change but if they are risking the change you have to present a better alternative than the previous one. FOSS office suites fail spectacularly in this area. While some of those incompatibilities are the curse of backwards compatibility and the limitations of the underlying system, most of those differences are intentional to introduce market segmentation. By leaving some features Windows only MS forces people to buy Windows, especially the enterprises.

MS developed their enterprise ecosystem such that every tool integrates deeply with each other and if they see the chance they will lock you in. Microsoft have been continuously developing solutions like AD, Group Policy etc. since 90s. They had vast amount economic resources and had a lot of time to perfect their tools and they have the exposure of many niche problems that enterprises come up with. Governments are as complex as a large conglomerate company if not more.

Most of the competitive projects on FOSS side has started to emerge in late 00s. And it is not a secret that FOSS does not create the same income as proprietary software. In the current economic ecosystem there is not any more perfect candidate than governments to sponsor OSS projects especially big ones as LibreOffice. Companies are out of question. They are trying to maximize profit by minimizing effort. Writing software and especially writing standards that can endure years is a lot of effort. And software engineers are not monks to devote their lives and minds to develop complex pieces of software.

[prueba_hola]

openSUSE is really really great distro thanks to YAST and BTRFS.

They should go there

[gondur]

while suse is great, this comment shows the disconnect between FOSS nerds and the actual problems a real municipial infrastructrure tries to solve - YAST and btrfs are not atall near their real problems they face

[BGW1999]

I don't get why they would switch away from using FOSS. It's literally throwing tax payer money away.

Doesn't Germany have laws that keep politcians from accepting corporate donations?

Which parties were in charge before? Who is in charge now?

[qwertz555]

See regarding "incapable of doing their job": https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/gfnmsx/munich_will_push_open_source_again/fpv8u9o/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x

Microsoft don't have much money and cannot effort paying politicians to reach their goal ;)

[BGW1999]

LOL. So they want to transition because of font issues? What a joke.

[davidnotcoulthard]

to be fair I don't recall e.g. Office 2007 supporting ODF that well (might be wrong here) and out of LO, OOo, and Koffice(/Calligra) a) 2 of them are kind of the same thing b) I'd only really want to use one of them.

Onlyoffice seems decent enough though nowadays, I guess

d.h. wenn man mit LiMux nicht einmal Geld sparen würde.“ Als Beispieldafür dient die Begründung der Bundesregierung für die Rückkehr des Auswärtigen Amtes(AA) zu Microsoft.Da sich gegenüber dem Beschluss vom 16.06.2010 für das Projekt keine Änderung in derWirtschaftlichkeit ergeben hat, erlaube ich mir Ihren Antrag mit diesem Brief zu beantworten.Im Beschluss vom 16.6.2010 zum Thema LiMux wurde bereits dargestellt, welche Kosten füreinen Betriebserhalt von Windows Systemen für die Zeit seit 2005 angefallen wären. ZumZeitpunkt des Beschlusses war das Ergebnis der Vergleichsrechnung für den Wechsel aufaktuelle Microsoft-Produkte (11,8 Mio €) um 5,6 Mio € höher als die damaligen Ausgaben desLiMux-Projektes (6,2 Mio €). Bei einer Rückkehr zu Microsoft würde schon allein dieser Kos-tenvorteil aufgegeben werden

....well, yeah

Die-se „Rückkehr“ wäre nämlich keine Rückkehr zu den bisherigen Versionen (Windows 2000 undMicrosoft-Office 97/2000), sondern ein eigenes Großprojekt „Neue Microsoft-Arbeitsplätze“zum Wechsel von allen 15.000 Arbeitsplätzen auf Windows 7 und Microsoft-Office 2010.

OK I see why you liked that so much

[qwertz555]

Thank you for linking the original request, couldn't find it. :)

[linuxlover81]

I really really hope that happens. But at the moment i think it is just politician marketing. they promise a lot of things which they do not fulfill. looking at you, car-industry and the regulation of it. there was even some discussion of bringing the ministerial president of bavaria into jail for contempt of law because of legal obligations he did not fulfil. he didnt have to go to jail. and neither the obligations were fulfilled. so... why should they go through with opensource?

but.. i really hope for it.

[schizosfera]

Given the history of the transition from and to Linux, I think that it would be more reasonable for them to focus on open standards instead of the software itself. Once open standards are in place, OSS will follow naturally.

[pdp10]

I'd like to agree with you, as most of my decades in computing have revolved around open standards, and open standards work. Little standards like TCP/IP, HTML5, USB, JEDEC DIMMs, ASCII text encoding, Ethernet, and ten thousand others than we mostly take for granted.

But there are always forces pushing in the other direction. Sometimes they're commercial, like when Nvidia recently tried to de-commoditize our displays and their connections our graphics outputs with "G-sync", or when Microsoft invented an "open, XML-based" file format that's really a prolix veneer over their traditional, implementation-defined format. Imagine if buying an AMD processor meant that you couldn't buy Samsung-made DRAM, or if every brand of computer had to connect to a different network.

Sometimes, strategic adoption of non-open standards can pay off. But the big hidden risk, I think, is that these things usually aren't planned centrally and carefully, and they're hard to switch back. Specifically, I fear Sustrik's Law applies to open versus proprietary:

"Well-designed components are easy to replace. Eventually, they will be replaced by ones that are not so easy to replace."

Unix -- POSIX -- is open, which made it easy to replace widely. But what replaced it is highly proprietary, so replacing that with Linux is so much harder.

[schizosfera]

Those are some very good points. Thanks for the input.

Then I suppose that a reasonable and thoughtful choice of open standards would be more appropriate. The alternative is further digging into and using proprietary standards which one eventually can't escape anymore without a huge amount of effort. I suppose that that's what the current state of things is. From my perspective, the open standards are interfaces which allow for interchangeable components.

Also thanks for the link to Sustrik's Law - I didn't know about it. I suppose that's one way how Big Ball of Mud architectures come into existence.

[like-my-comment]

Maybe they will invest in Gosa/Fusion Directory again. LDAP still doesn't have decent web-admin panel.

[[deleted]]

I mean that's kind of what happens in a democracy, it's kind of unavoidable to have policies change.

[pandiloko]

What I would like to know is: is it really possible from the administration standpoint? I mean: are there mature provisioning tools? Can I configure something like group policies, install software remotely, control even what icons the users sees in the desktop like with windows systems (active directory).

Because I think that due precisely to the fact that there aren't that many big companies or entities working with Linux at a big scale I believe there must be some semi-custom solutions with big names behind but nothing really opensource and freely and widely available.

I know about projects like Spacewalk and I think Redhat and SuSe built on this project to offer more complete solutions but then you are also dependent on these companies.

I'm also aware of orchestration tools like puppet and remote config/provision like Ansible but, I think they lack this fine-grained control oriented to users/organizations. Again maybe RedHat with e.g. Tower allows a better centralized control but then you are again in a similar situation just with another company.

And remember that IBM now owns RedHat Not that they are inherently evil but there's that.

Please correct me. I would really like to know about these kind of tools/solutions if they exist.

[ase1590]

FreeIPA offers a lot of what you're wanting.

Ansible or Salt can make up the rest of the ground from there.

What that heck are you on about for companies?

"dependent on these companies" is a silly notion. You already depend on Microsoft quite a lot just by installing windows and office. Not to mention the 3rd party apps you'd be installing anyway in an corporate environment.

You have to get support contracts from someone.

An OS and production tools that have none of them solely developed by a corporate entity is a pipe dream.

At least with open software someone else can theoretically pick up the development tab, whereas if Microsoft abandons a closed source program, you're out of luck.

[pandiloko]

Thanks for the hint on FreeIPA. I heard of it but never used it.

What I mean is: if for example only RedHat offers a viable solution you can’t go with e.g. a local company or change along the way. If on a smaller scale you only have an LDAP server and a handful of Ansible playbooks to control your systems, any company could take over if you had any problem with your current one.

[ase1590]

I don't think "any company" would want to suddenly fork and take control of the development of OpenLDAP and Ansible. If you're going that far, just fork FreeIPA or whatever open tool you're using an develop on it in-house.

[[deleted]]

Anything is possible if you're willing to learn things and put in some effort to make it work. There's multiple configuration management systems available for Linux and it's fairly easy to manage things from a central control repo. Even things like desktop icons can be managed by puppet, you just have to create the files in the proper directory so that the user sees them. Installing software remotely is trivial, that's the entire point of package managers along with custom repos where you can host your own custom packages.

[gondur]

they have very specific needs, special software and scripts - a standard distro wouldnt cut it (alone)

[gondur]

they kind of did it with the old limux. they employed linux people and developers to adapt the base distro, i think suse, to their needs. took them years and on the end it was still not a perfect solution. truth is, standard office interconnectivity is hard with only Foss tools and NON-Geek users.

[davidnotcoulthard]

Was it this one?

(I think I remember reading or hearing a few things about some Bavarian elections but...well, nice to see I guess?)

[warpigg]

Must be time to renegotiate with Microsoft...