LiMux Project Has Saved Munich €10m So Far 219
Mojo66 writes "After project savings had been estimated to amount to at least €4 million in March, more precise figures are now in: Over €10 million (approximately £8 million or $12.8 million) has been saved by the city of Munich, thanks to its development and use of the city's own Linux platform. The calculation compares the current overall cost of the LiMux migration with that of two technologically equivalent Windows scenarios: Windows with Microsoft Office and Windows with OpenOffice. Reportedly, savings amount to over €10 million. The study is based on around 11,000 migrated workplaces within Munich's city administration as well as 15,000 desktops that are equipped with an open source office suite. The comparison with Windows assumes that Windows systems must be on the same technological level; this would, for example, mean that they would have been upgraded to Windows 7 at the end of 2011. Overall, the project says that Windows and Microsoft Office would have cost just over €34 million, while Windows with Open Office would have cost about €30 million. The LiMux scenario, on the other hand, has reportedly cost less than €23 million. A detailed report (in German) is available."
Cancelled (Score:2, Informative)
I thought I heard that the project had been cancelled because of problems in dealing with proprietary file formats (Word, etc). Was that somewhere else?
Re:Cancelled (Score:2, Informative)
You remember right:
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/11/16/207227/german-city-says-openoffice-shortcomings-are-forcing-it-back-to-microsoft [slashdot.org]
Re:Cancelled (Score:4, Informative)
I think you're thinking of Freiburg
http://news.techworld.com/operating-systems/3411884/openoffice-dumped-as-freiburg-plots-return-to-microsoft/ [techworld.com]
It was on /. but I can't seem to find the story
Re:Cancelled (Score:5, Informative)
Re:hope it's true (Score:5, Informative)
Note that in Israel, people use more than 90% Windows and negligible amount of Linux. [statcounter.com] Given that there's probably no place with a higher percentage of Jews than Israel, clearly Windows is the favourite operating system of Jews. Not that it matters.
"Teabaggers" refers to Tea Party movement members. Those are the far right wing of the US. Given that even the US left wing is right wing from European view, but Munich is governed by Social Democrats, i.e. left wing from European view, I'd say they are as far from being Teabaggers as they can be (OK, not really; "Die Linke" would be even more left-wing, as the name already tells: It is German for "The Left"). You are so completely off, that's not even funny. Could you not at least have taken the "communist" stereotype?
But maybe it's just that you lack miR-941 :-)
Re:Stupid to ask this (Score:5, Informative)
I'm a bit curious what desktop environments they are running - maybe I'll go do some searches!
You don't need to search very far. [wikipedia.org] (Ubuntu with KDE.)
Re:hope it's true (Score:4, Informative)
Microsoft's own estimate for software costs [google.com] on an enterprise desktop is $301/PC annually, plus $126 deployment costs. Who are we to argue with the people who get the cash?
Re:hope it's true (Score:5, Informative)
The compliance tracking costs alone would not have been trivial for that many MS systems.
Most people won't understand what you mean. Basically once your business is on Microsoft's radar they will assume you are using a complete suite of Microsoft products and if you aren't licensed for what they think you are probably using they'll send you a letter asking to prove what licenses you do hold. This costs money, be it your own time or as usually happens some IT contractors time. In the EU/UK the whole thing is pretty shady, but if you don't comply you risk having it escalated to legal threats. Before you say it, having a day in court is not what most businesses want, particularly small businesses where every hand is essential and where that day in court represents legal fees and lost revenue. You're not going to get that back.
I've avoided using MS products for years. Some stuff I can't avoid. I have no financials/stock control software with local support that runs on anything but MS server software. You can run everything on the server and side-step Windows licenses on the desktop, but pay about the same for the CAL, or whatever they call it now. I hope what Munich is doing catches on. If you're a home user or a mega-corporation you have the choice to by-pass Microsoft and use open source software. Both these markets are served. If you're an SME you're using Microsoft.