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Open Source Cities Followup — Munich Yea, Vienna Nay
Posted by
kdawson
on Wed Jun 04, 2008 07:20 AM
from the positively-dickensian dept.
from the positively-dickensian dept.
We're catching up on two stories of municipal engagement with open source software: Munich (which decided to go OS in 2003) and Vienna (2005). E5Rebel brings us news that Munich has stayed the course. But bkingaut informs that Vienna has decided to migrate back to Windows (Google translation) — to Vista no less. The migration of 720 computers used in kindergartens will cost the city about €8M. The given reason for all this is a language test application for the kids that only works with MS IE and won't be made compatible (by the producer) with Firefox until 2009.
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City of Vienna Chooses Linux 268 comments
Bill Kendrick writes "Back in January, ZDNet reported that the city of Vienna, Austria was looking to move at least a portion of its desktops to Linux. Well, it looks like it happened (in German; use the fish). Their official distro is based on Debian with KDE, and is called WEINUX." Update: 07/06 12:49 GMT by T : Several readers wrote to correct the spelling here: the correct name of the distro is "WIENUX."
[+]
The State of Munich's Ongoing Linux Migration 203 comments
christian.einfeldt writes "The Munich decision to move its 14,000 desktops to Free Open Source Software created a big splash back in 2003 as news circulated of the third-largest German city's defection from Microsoft. When it was announced in 2003, the story garnered coverage even in the US, such as an extensive article in USA Today on-line. Currently, about 60% of desktops are using OpenOffice, with the remaining 40% to be completed by the end of 2009. Firefox and Thunderbird are being used in all of the city's desktop machines. Ten percent of desktops are running the LiMux Debian-based distro, and 80% will be running LiMux by 2012 at the latest. Autonomy was generally considered more important than cost savings, although the LiMux initiative is increasing competition in the IT industry in Munich already. The program has succeeded because the city administration has been careful to reach out to all stakeholders, from managers down to simple end users."
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so... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:so... (Score:5, Informative)
There are numerous methods for obtaining such a license without directly paying for it.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
When I installed IES4Linux, I didn't have to agree to any EULA at all.
Well, it IS covered by a EULA. I doubt any judge will care how you got around it, no matter what creative excuse from "a script did it" to "my neighbourhood kid must have agreed to it" you use. Of course, noone is going to bother YOU on your home PC, but if you rolled this out on an official network they might. Also I think the ies4linux are doing a very creative reading of the EULA [microsoft.com], ignoring the next two sentences:
"General. The OS Components are provided to you by Microsoft to update, supplement, or repl
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Price that out vs. converting all 720 physical computers to nonfree software from the OS up, and that for one app that will be compatible in a year.
Stupid developers (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Stupid developers (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Stupid developers (Score:4, Interesting)
Any decent manager would go for that.
Parent
Re:Stupid developers (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Abso-fricken-lutely (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Stupid developers (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Stupid developers (Score:5, Informative)
The Uk regulatory body (OfQual) does not hinder them
Parent
Re:Stupid developers (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Stupid developers (Score:4, Insightful)
IE has a market share of over 50%.
If you develop for the web you MUST develop for IE. It doesn't matter that Firefox is easier to develop for because it is still extra work.
If you are going sell anything that works on a web browser IE support is mandatory.
I along with a lot of other people feel that Firefox is also mandatory for anything you put on the Internet. If you are building a site you don't want lock out big percentage of potental users. I do tend to write for Firefox and then port to IE but IE support is without a doubt mandatory.
Microsoft has it right. Developers, Developers, Developers! People don't use an OS they use applications. I love Linux but I have to keep a Windows for work and for FSX.
If the programs you use don't run on an OS that OS is useless to you.
Parent
Re:Stupid developers (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Stupid developers (Score:4, Insightful)
You are correct that IE 5,6, and 7 are different but that doesn't matter.
If it works in IE 5 it will probably work in IE 6. IE 7 was a little harder to deal with which is why a lot of companies held off on IE 7. But NONE of that matters. You must support the terrible mess that is IE. There really isn't a choice for most web developers. Heck I wish that we could all just stick with W3C code but that isn't an option in this world.
Firefox's market share is around 30% in Europe. But here is the key question. What market share does windows have? How many Firefox users also have IE so they can use it when they have no other choice?
I love Firefox. It is a better browser than IE. It is easier to code for than IE.
BUT the sad truth is that just doesn't matter.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You need to look at your sample.
You don't say. Just as you.
Are you looking at the average work pc or people's home pc?
Both work (a lot, many users) and home. Though I agree that they are not "average".
If they have Windows they have IE.
Of course, but so what when people don't use it.
Yes Firefox is free but rolling it out to hundreds of PCs in a company isn't. Then you have the problem of legacy systems.
15,000 user global company (HQ in US), top employer. We are in the middle of fixing all standard incompatibilities in the intranet and evaluate FF3, Opera, and IE7 as the company's standard browser. Note that even in the unlikely event that IE7 is chosen, the intranet will be compliant and people are free to use an alternative (which most will, sin
Why not switch test software? (Score:5, Insightful)
OR even better, they could write some and help other schools going open source.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If the way things work in Croatia is any clue, money has Changed Hands in order for things to resolve this way.
Re:Why not switch test software? (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Why not switch test software? (Score:4, Interesting)
My guess is that the schools looked at the applications they needed, found one that didn't work as intended and didn't think to contact the manufacturer to say "Before we drop 8 million euros on Windows, can you speed up engineering your product to run in Linux for, say, 1 million euros?"
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
My guess is that, while an obvious choice, runs into hurdles that arise within the context of school administration (i.e., all software requires committee approval, public meetings, budget approval, etc.).
If there's an upside to this sad state of affairs, it's that we have a new Slashdot meme:
Vista -- please won't someone think of the kids?
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Why not switch test software? (Score:4, Insightful)
The questions are usually copyrighted so you need someone to write a new set of questions, get them certified by the education department, get the app written, the app certified by the education department and so on. All this is subject to junkets, sometimes money changing hands, lobbying and so on.
Educational and testing software is an area which is nearly impossible for a newcomer to break in. Competition is virtually inexistent, quality is crap and there is bugger all that can be done about it.
Parent
Re:Why not switch test software? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
And if you give me just 1 million, not 5 or 12, I'll wrap you about any windows application to work on linux, in half the time they need to migrate their whole shit to vista. Money-back guarantee.
good opportunity (Score:4, Informative)
Seems like a good price...
Sorry, reading the onion too much...
More â8M to make a trivial web app compatible (Score:3, Funny)
The wonderful world of "educational" software (Score:4, Interesting)
It is the _REAL_ reason on why Microsoft is so prevalent.
Wow (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Translation of linked article (Score:5, Informative)
"That's a major setback to the conversion to linux of the city.", Marie Ringler, a member of the district council and representative of the Vienna Green party, said to ORF.at. On Wednesday the Vienna district council will decide that the most important linux installation (720 computers) of the city council be migrated to Windows Vista. The corresponding proposal was made available to ORF.net
-----8,000,000 Euros for Microsoft-----
The MA 14, the body that is responsible for the city's IT-systems, has thus made available a budget of 8,000,000 Euros for the purchase of software licenses. These costs will be reimbursed to the MA 14 by MA 10 (kindergartens) and MA 56 (school administration).
The migration of the public authorities' computers from Windows 2000 and Office 2000 to Vista and Office 2007 will cost 7,600,000 Euros, and the purchase of 2,600 licenses for Windows, Office, and Server-software in Vienna's [Bildungsnetz] education network will cost 324,000 Euros. The changeover of the 720 kindergarten computers from the city-branded linux distribution "Wienux"* to Vista will cost around 105,000 Euros.
-----Language skill tests for children-----
The migration of the kindergarten computers is because of a piece of software that tests kindergarten children's language abilities is only available on the Internet Explorer platform. The makers will have a Firefox version of their product only by 2009, according to Ringler.
"The city could have gotten the company to get their version that runs on Firefox out the door faster with only a fraction of the money that the changeover to Windows will cost, Ringler said, who also accuses the city of not following the Open Source concept and not producing any incentive to migrate from Windows to Wienux. The city also missed the opportunity to subsidize the 1,000 companies that make open source software in the Vienna region.
In Fall 2008, the STOSS2 studies, which was initiated by Vienna and is concerned with the analysis of costs and benefits of using open source software in the city council, will be published.
-----The MA 14 continues to polish Wienux-----
Klaus Rohr, spokesman of the MA 14, confirmed the roll-back on Tuesday afternoon, which is to be completed in 2008. The most important reason for the migration from Linux to Windows is the availability of the aforementioned software only for Windows via Internet Explorer. But there have also been problems with hardware detection in linux, according to him.
But the re-migration to Windows doesn't imply that Wienux will die. The distribution is to be continued to be developed and distributed, according to Rohr.
-----SPÖ: "Wienux is not dead"-----
SPÖ-district councilor Siegfried Lindenmayr doesn't view Wienux as dead either. "Wienux isn't dead. The city of Vienna has used open source software since 20 years and will also continue to do so," he said to ORF.at. "The use of software isn't a question of ideology to us, however. The best educational software runs on Windows, and therefore we will use Windows in our kindergartens."
The city's general open source strategy hasn't changed. The MA 14 will continue to offer linux and install it wherever departments want it.
English Story (Score:5, Informative)
Little Bug in the Teaser (Score:3, Informative)
First I thought this may have been a bug in TFTtranslation but It's even correct in TFTofTFA.
Just not in the teaser.
Hardly a complete success (Score:2, Informative)
[In 2003] The local government in Munich, Germany, [voted] to move 14,000 computers from Microsoft's Windows to the rival Linux operating system
[In 2008]Status quo of the LiMux project:
1000 work stations migrated to LiMux
6000 work stations using OpenOffice.org
90% work stations using Firefox and Thunderbird
That means that during the five odd years that have elapsed since the decision was taken a grand 7% of the computers have been switched over to linux. And this on what the article states is the budget for the transition was 30 million euros.
Microsoft develops software for Austrian kindergar (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Compatability? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is pretty sad, because the school system should have told them "Make it work with Mozilla and we'll talk, until then take a hike". I'm pretty sure they would have sped up development quite a bit to get the sale (although it would probably have been just as crappy).
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If I was that government I would have paid some High School students to write a website for a passing grade in one of their classes.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Compatability? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:In my experience (Score:5, Interesting)
How can you possibly say IE is easier to develop for then Firefox?
Either way it's HTML and CSS, it's just that one of them has a renderer that actually works, and the other is broken in a multitude of ways.
And that's not even getting started on things like Firebug, which makes it far easier to develop on Firefox then with IE's "something broke, I'm not going to tell you where" model of error reporting for Javascript.
What? When was the last time you heard of Microsoft providing support for IE?
Lets take the classic example of transparent PNGs, which took years to get fixed. And that's something that thousands of developers have been screaming for - I dread to think what would result if you called up Microsoft and said "I have a really specific problem, can you fix it?"
If you want support for Firefox there are forums, IRC channels, and a publicly viewable bug tracker. I'd imagine that if you waved enough money at them the Mozilla Foundation would be quite happy to get a problem you have fixed pretty damn quick as well.
Parent
Re:In my experience (Score:5, Informative)
This is the nature of Microsoft's software and APIs - if you use it in uncommon ways, it breaks. I can give you such examples all day - JavaScript memory leaks in IE6 and IE7? How window.openPopup() requires weird hacks to work with domain relaxation? Flickering images at page load in IE6? The first BR tag in a block tag does not appear when the block tag has a background image? document.selection returns gives you a selection object from a different document object than the one you specified?
Add these to the fact that IE does not have free developer tools like Firebug, Safari Inspector and Drosera, and Opera Dragonfly available (notice how every significant competitor to IE has one)... I'd take the opinion of anyone who says "IE is easy to develop for" with huge pinch of salt. And please... trying to bully people with "I'm an experienced developer" in the technology world isn't a very smart thing to do.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Going that way, it takes about a day to get things working right in IE once things are working. Going the other way you could easily drop a week, bouncing back and forth between the two browsers.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:The COMPLETE migration will cost about 8M euros (Score:3, Insightful)
The migration of the 720 computers will only cost 105,000 euros. Sorry about that. Couldn't edit it anymore
Someone seems to be getting their sums wrong here. At only about 140 euros per computer, this is most likely the cost for Vista licenses. It doesn't count time for installation, training, downtime, and all the other mess that comes with changing from a stable operating system to a new, unproven platform. But apparently these costs can only be counted when switching away from Windows, not when switching to Windows.