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."
hope it's true (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope the numbers hold water because that would make a great research case (all info has been public from the begining)
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Personally I think their lower pricing for Windows 8 should be considered along the lines of dumping already.
The marginal cost of an operating system is zero. Competition is pushing OS prices down to that point. That's the way capitalism is supposed to work, and hasn't for the past few decades.
Lower prices are a good thing.
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 :-)
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+1 Trollslayer
Informative? Never heard of Jay or silent Bob? (Score:3)
Only if you've never seen one of several of the Kevin Smith movies where the recurring character Jay uses the "you cocksmoking teabaggers" line quoted above. You can google what it means if you like. Many of the people in the astroturfed weirdness that was the "tea party" that had started to call themselves "teabaggers" did that and decided they don't want to be called it anymore.
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"Teabaggers"
You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.
Teabagging is first and foremost not a political reference but rather a reference to a sex act.
Re:hope it's true (Score:5, Insightful)
I see several possibilities here.
1: AC is just retarded.
2: AC is a Microsoft troll
3: AC is a racist bitch who needed only the flimsiest excuse to slam Jews.
4: AC is a software salesman in Munich who lost a lot of money to LiMux
5: AC is simply so small minded that he doesn't understand what ten million Euros are worth
Anyway, moving past AC's tantrum, I wonder if the full saving are being reported? What does it cost for anti-virus protection, in an organization that size? Kaspersky, or Symantec, or whoever, doesn't just give away their software to big cities, do they? Other malware protections, like Spybot S&D have to be purchased, unless they are for personal home use. Not to mention that it takes a lot of IT time to cleanse and restore systems that have been FUBAR'd by malware.
The report seems to just skirt around that little issue. It's possible that they are assuming that all of the updated/upgraded Windows computers would have been running Microsoft's own Security Essentials, instead of a third party application.
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1: AC is just retarded.
2: AC is a Microsoft troll
3: AC is a racist bitch who needed only the flimsiest excuse to slam Jews.
4: AC is a software salesman in Munich who lost a lot of money to LiMux
5: AC is simply so small minded that he doesn't understand what ten million Euros are worth
I am open to the possibility that he/she is all of the above.
Re:hope it's true (Score:5, Insightful)
They report has 15,000 Windows upgrades costing 4.2 Million Euros, or 280 Euros each. That is $362 for each office suite. I can find 1 copy of Office Pro for $179, and 3 copies for $350.
Here's the link: http://www.softwareking.com/office-2010-pro.html [softwareking.com]
Something smells fishy.
Does your figure include Windows + MS office + windows server & CALs (AD, WSUS, SCCM, etc) + whatever else you need to run an all-MS network? You're not going to install 15,000 desktops by buying 15,000 discount install disks online.
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That's the academic edition, the license precludes commercial use. Had you continued scrolling, you'd have found retail editions which are rather dearer.
The retail editions listed say 3 installs but IIRC that's 3 installs per user, not 3 separate users each with their own PC.
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?
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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.
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It already has caught on, but usually in organisations where the end user seldom needs Office anyway because 95% of their works done with some sort of dedicated application.
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?
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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]
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D'oh, that's Freiburg. I put Munich in my search Google!!!
Re:Cancelled (Score:5, Informative)
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Linux Can't Bribe (Score:2, Interesting)
..and of course It Can't Kick Back. The severest deficiency of all in the world of business and government.
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..and of course It Can't Kick Back.
This is about a political/governmental entity, where such things are not called kickbacks; they're called campaign contributions.
(At least that's how it works here in the US, where the courts have fully legalized it. And I've seen a bit of evidence that similar phrases -- translated into the local language of course -- are rapidly being (re)introduced in many other parts of the world. So you need to update your terminology. ;-)
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This comes up every time there's a Microsoft/OpenOffice discussion.
Fact is its simply not true. This fantasy of some slick salesman passing a brown envelope full of unmarked £20 notes in exchange for a big order is just that - a fantasy. It just doesn't happen in most of the Western world for two reasons:
- Retail margins are so slim that they don't allow it.
- The risks involved in being unmasked as using dishonest sales tactics are too great.
The most I've ever heard of is being taken o
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
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Re:Cancelled (Score:5, Funny)
Freiburg found that Microsoft would pay them well not to be a free burg any longer...
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Interesting that "frei" means "free" but Freiburg did the opposite of that.
Re:Cancelled (Score:4, Insightful)
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Let's see. Five year old MS Office... this is 2012, so that would be Office 2007 (+/- one year), yeah?
Which uses the same file formats as Office 2010. I haven't heard of any major file format changes for the upcoming Office 2013, (maybe I've missed a story? I don't really pay close attention). And there is a set of free plugins you can download for editing the docx, xlsx etc file types in Office 2003, which is even older.
Of course, the feature compatibility isn't ever 100% complete between Office versions (
Hard to ask this... (Score:2, Interesting)
...without sounding like a shill, but I'm really curious if the end result works just as well. If all your people are are trained on Windows and Office, switching to Linux and OpenOffice will have an associated cost in terms of retraining and reduced productivity while people become proficient in the new software, right? I don't read German, so I have no idea if those numbers are included in the final cost. And I think it's great that they are showing that home grown Linux can be cheaper (for their needs).
Re:Hard to ask this... (Score:5, Insightful)
Look at it this way, can it be worse than Microsoft's switch to a ribbon interface? (And now brace for tiles...)
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Stupid to ask it. (Score:5, Interesting)
Since you can't have been Proficient in Windows 7 until it was released in 2011, staying on Windows would have cost you in terms of retraining and reduced productivity while people become proficient in the new software, right?
And yes the figures are included in the costs.
The REAL cost in the short term is -10mil. In the long term: priceless.
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Ordinary users do not use betas. DIAF, troll.
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Ordinary users don't use betas, but your typical member of Slashdot audience is not an ordinary user.
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It is fair to say that bulk of government workers in Munich aren't likely to be typical members of the Slashdot audience or use betas. Also, Linux and OpenOffice were available to use long before the beta.
It really doesn't matter if its theoretically possible to have been proficient in a platform at some date, the only date that matters would be the one that the city adopts the software since the bulk of the staff wouldn't begin using the software until that point.
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And as much as I 'hate' the new Windows interface it's really not that different from 2000. The Start Menu is a mess but as far as everything else in the GUI, it's still 90% of where it was 10 years ago.
Re:Hard to ask this... (Score:4, Insightful)
Given the changes MS keeps making in it's UI, the retraining costs and productivity losses happen either way. There is a better chance that Linux w/ OOffice won't cause those costs to recur with each release.
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You NEED extensive retraining when you change to a competitor's product.
You do NOT need retraining when MS changed the UI araound. In fact it boosted efficiency.
Also MS Office amounts propably to a third of daily software usage by the average office drone. The other two thirds is custom stuff they propably also didn't get training for. And the reamining quarter is time wasters like Solitaire
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Also MS Office amounts propably to a third of daily software usage by the average office drone. The other two thirds is custom stuff they propably also didn't get training for. And the reamining quarter is time wasters like Solitaire.
Difficult to argue with that math, and keep a straight face.
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There is a perfectly good option to stay with the Gnome2 interface. In fact, there are two forks of Gnome explicitly to stay with the 2.x interface.
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They already make a mess of Windows; I'd hate to see what happens to a GUI that lets them create/delete panels.
Re:Hard to ask this... (Score:4, Insightful)
They're quickly becoming about the same. Linux and OpenOffice on the desktop are still bad, but getting better. Gnome, etc are all pretty trivial to use until you get to things like adding printers, and Open Office is basically Word 2000. Similarly, Windows / Word is fine, but getting worse. Adding networked printers in Windows seems to keep getting harder, and Word keeps adding more and more junk until it's useless. On top of this Google Docs is more than adequate for most tasks, and the multi-user live-document-editing is an amazingly useful feature. That gives 2 solid Windows alternatives.
People don't really need training. The systems are about the same, and the parts that one would need to train for have become so far away from the normal user's abilities that there really isn't a point to training anyone other than your IT people. And your IT people shouldn't have a problem with any of this.
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> until you get to things like adding printers
Interesting. I never thought that the CUPS admin interface was very daunting. All very "in the browser" GUI-ish.
Getting networked scanning working under Linux (saned) isn't for the command-line challenged. But considering that Microsoft doesn't even provide a competing standard for networked scanners, the situation under Windows cannot be any better.
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First you have to find the cups interface. I mean I realize that calling a printing system cups is really intuitive to some people but for the rest something that includes the word "print" might be more appropriate and easy to remember. You actually might pick say "Network Print" out of a list without anyone telling you about it and if they did tell you about it, you'd likely remember that "Network Print" was for network printing the next time you needed it.
Even the driver naming is ugly and unintuitive. Fo
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We are now several years down this road and their people are now far more trained with Limux and OpenOffice (why?) that with MS and Office. The long term benefits are already being felt.
Re:Hard to ask this... (Score:5, Insightful)
The report seems to address that added cost for switching to systems the people were unfamiliar with. And, as already has been mentioned - people who stayed with Microsoft products have had their own training expenses!
Remember too, that the report addresses relatively short-term savings. Over the course of the next decade, the saving will increase dramatically. The people are going to need less and less training and retraining as time goes on. IT expenses will decrease, probably dramatically, for that reason. Retraining for upgrades will probably remain. You can only estimate those costs if you have a crystal ball or something to predict how Linux and Windows updates/upgrades are going to work out in the years ahead. But - there will be NO LICENSING fees associated with any of those upgrade.
And, if you scroll up to my earlier post, you'll have to consider the savings in virus infections and recovery, as well as the costs involved with leaking protected data, liability, etc. No, Linux isn't the end-all and be-all in computer security, but it's track record is superior to Windows, which should translate into tremendous savings.
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Remember too, that the report addresses relatively short-term savings. Over the course of the next decade, the saving will increase dramatically. The people are going to need less and less training and retraining as time goes on.
I think that's a generous assumption, since most other people use MS Office they'll be constantly training new users, new administrators and figuring out new headaches with hardware/driver compatibility. Here in Norway our biggest OpenOffice poster boy with 20,000 seats (that's fairly big in a country of 5 mio people) dropped it last year and went back to MS Office after 7 years - you'd think they'd be well into the "long time savings" period by then.
Re:Hard to ask this... (Score:4, Interesting)
Would you care to share with us which 20,000 seat Norwegian Openoffice deployment that was? I hear the Norwegian national broadcasting orporation NRK is moving to Openoffice [linux-magazine.com].
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...without sounding like a shill, but I'm really curious if the end result works just as well. If all your people are are trained on Windows and Office, switching to Linux and OpenOffice will have an associated cost in terms of retraining and reduced productivity while people become proficient in the new software, right?
Of course it would, but there's also a license cost and a training cost in upgrading Windows and Office to stay current. The total cost of Linux and OpenOffice is less. The real difference would show in productivity. If your staff ended up spending more time fiddling with settings and formats in OpenOffice or in Microsoft Office, that could tip the scale either way. But a city ought to have a policy regarding formatting and adhere to a bare style that minimizes the time spent fiddling with formatting an
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" But a city ought to have a policy regarding formatting"
Indeed and my experience when working with government entities (here in the US) is that they impose their standards on 3rd parties not the other way around. Generally, it is you who needs to interact with the city. The city couldn't care less if you don't get your permits, licenses, whatever. They'll just fine or penalize you if you haven't managed to get the right paperwork submitted in the format they've dictated.
Re:Hard to ask this... (Score:5, Insightful)
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There have been a few interviews with the limux people, and the scope of what they're doing is a little more than just stick linux+openoffice on the desktop and be done. It includes user training too, among such things as close liason with the users and giving them the tools they need, getting-toes-wet opportunities and smooth changeovers. I suspect we haven't seen the end of the savings yet.
Disclaimer: Not affiliated. Tried to but didn't get hired, which is a bit of a pity.
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Also you don't seem to be aware of the reality of IT workplaces in large organizations. They use custom software. Software built specifically for them. Stuff that doesn't come up when you google for it. They are used to learning new stuff. The Kreisverwaltungsreferat alone propably has a couple of hundred custom software solutions created from scratch and each of it unprecedented.
They are const
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Which is actually a huge money savings that they aren't even counting. It is far easier to code those sort of custom inhouse solutions for Linux than Windows.
Who trains people to use a WP anymore? (Score:2)
So sorry, you DO sound like a shill because there appears to be no substance to your nitpick, thus your petty little effort to sow uncertainty (ie. *real* cost) has nothing to back it up IMHO.
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Training and deployment has been in the estimates from Munich from the get-go, and some reports pointed to them being smaller cost-items than anticipated.
Re:Stupid to ask this (Score:5, Insightful)
1) No you couldn't. Companies don't roll out to everyone in their company beta releases of windows.
2) Linux can be made to look like classic windows with themes. For the typical office worker, this would have been more than sufficient.
3) Switching to Office 2010 is required because the docx standard isn't supported in 2003. Keeping on Windows doesn't require not switching to OpenOffice. And Open Office opens different versions of Office documents more easily than Office 2010 or 2003. No need to install any compatability pack.
So, basically, you have to make shit up to make it appear that maybe they didn't need to retrain. Of course, if they didn't upgrade ANY software, they wouldn't have to retrain.
Then again, they would retrain their staff else why did they train their staff for WinXP? Or why would they train their staff on Linux and OO.o if they don't on Windows?
Basically, you're turning round and round and round making assertions MERELY so you can pretend that Windows is cheaper.
Why?
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not necessarily - whilst any business can stick with Office 2003 or 2007, Microsoft tries their hardest to keep you upgrading - for example, if you are on the SA licencing system (ie for bulk purchases) then you must upgrade to the latest version. No option to keep running old version.
Then, of course, most companies will upgrade anyway, like they upgrade from XP when, technically, they don't really need to. Of course they will upgrade to 7 eventually due to security support, but Office has just as many prob
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1. training for public beta means loss of productivity, worker has to switch from a desktop to another; moreover one is unstable, and the other is a public beta :D
Lots of stuff under windows needs new drivers when win version is bumped up...
2. are there xp official themes from MS? or are they coming from serious software houses that can give support? Because, installing binaries from random little software house which can break at any moment is a worse scenario than getting used to the new system.
3. iirc of
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2. are there xp official themes from MS?
He referred to the Classic Theme, which is the good old flat gray look that's been there since Win95. That's available out of the box in any Windows version up to and including 7 (but not 8), and is officially supported.
. iirc office 03 crashed more often with 7 and couldn't run under 64 bits.
Office 2003 can definitely run just fine under a 64-bit OS, same as any other 32-bit Win32 application.
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The report made no such claim. The report specifically states that they made the report as realistic and as fair as possible by assuming that the city would have reached the same degree of modernization, had they stayed with Microsoft products.
See, they aren't running ten year old kernels, or six year old office suites. They are running the latest and the greatest of Linux offerings, in today's real world. Fully updated, upgraded, and patched for stability and security.
I'm a bit curious what desktop envi
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:Stupid to ask this (Score:4, Interesting)
I have personally found many issues with working on 2003 and 2010. Specifically Accses. 2010 wants to convert and save as the 2010 format which makes 2003 clients unable to see those changesm, basically requiring 2 levels of databases or matching office versions. I have actually been converting some of our business databases to PHP / SQL to avoid the M$ update hell.
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1. Not really relevant. The city isn't going to spend a few hours assessing the individual off the record learning of each staff member. They have to work from the assumption that their staff is first exposed to a new version of software when they adopt it (and in most cases this will be true, office workers don't generally run betas).
2. Highly debatable. UAC and forced driver signing alone would have required substantial user support. It also ignores the licensing costs.
"So basically if their report claims
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I don't know about the troll but I'm pretty sure the reason Munich felt BOTH upgrades were appropriate is because they are likely running up-to-date versions of Linux and OpenOffice.org so a fair comparison is against the costs associated with running the latest versions of Windows and Office.
meanwhile... (Score:5, Funny)
meanwhile somewhere in redmoon, a chair flies through the air.
Libreoffice is the challenger (Score:5, Interesting)
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You have a good argument, but I don't agree that going open source is the more likely way out to Microsoft.
I think they'll push cloud computing first (if ever) going to some kind of open source. This way, the suite itself became expendable without compromising the monopoly.
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Warren Buffett was Right (Score:5, Interesting)
He couldn't understand the long term viability of a software only business!
How do the numbers scale ? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is nice because it tells us that with a large migration to a Linux based desktop saves about 1/3. What does this tell us about the migrations that will follow or are not so big ? Different factors pull in different directions.
* Munich is big enough to demand that correspondents use file formats that they can support - this is more than about LibreOffice
* The cost software rewrites (special bespoke stuff) could be amortised over many users
* The overall project costs (design, IT staff retraining, ...) could be amortised over many users
* They are pioneers - those who follow should be able to use their blueprint, avoid the mistakes that Munich made
* They were probably getting large volume license discounts on propietary s/ware, more than smaller organisations would have got, so they saved less
What do you think ? What do you say when a customer asks how much they will save ?
The training costs (Score:4, Interesting)
Looking at the report, the savings come from not having to buy software licenses (~ €6 million) and hardware upgrades (~ €4 million). They have an additional €16 million in the budget with is applied equally to the all Microsoft, LibreOffice on Microsoft and LiMux cases. That money goes to support, customization, trainings and that kind of thing. The allocated budget for each item is exactly the same in all cases.
I think there's an interesting message there: "staying with Microsoft saves you training money" is simply a myth.
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What 1M Euros from each city could do! (Score:3)
Unless I am mistaken (tl;dr) each city in Germany seems to be considering gnu/linux separately and much effort is probably being duplicated in the evaluation, training and customization phases. I am curious:
1) Wouldn't savings continue into the future with no need to buy Windows 2015, etc when supported version life ends?
2) Couldn't the second city in Germany use what Munich learned, compare Munich's consideration process to their own situation and save a lot of effort?
3) I don't know what kind of customization is involved, but wouldn't it be the same for say Stuttgart or Koeln?
4) If 1 million Euros of the saved money from each city is put into hiring open source developers to improve the system, that would be a massive boon to the open source world and open source software in general. Is anybody thinking about this? Specifically:
5) What are the chances / how would one go about in establishing a way for all municipal/state governments in Germany or EU for that matter, to pool their funds and make the necessary improvements such as oh I don't know, how about:
- LibreOffice enhancements like fixing pasting of outlines from TextEdit into LibreOffice, making outlines import correctly from LO into MS Word, making templates for Draw for both government and small/medium/large companies, making templates for Calc, Write and Impress, making database templates that work with it all, gathering, organizing and fixing every glaring compatibility issue regarding MS Office interoperability, etc. It isn't rocket science and 50M Euros with some responsible project managers could stomp out all the distracting issues.
- Multilingual video series on merits of free software, TCO, installation, training, submitting bug reports and enhancement requests, writing software.
- Make a global clearing house for software/services wish list, and how to resolve issues on various distros site, so the wheel doesn't get reinvented all the time.
- Make a global support and development job site that helps local developers
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Too right. I really like the idea of switching to open/libreoffice, but it simply isn't practical. I have several spreadsheets that I use to get data out of Excel and into AutoCAD. I don't think that I can do this between AutoCAD and Calc.
I also wrote a very large spreadsheet that predicts parking demand based on land-use data that breaks when I use Openoffice. I tried porting it over, but one of the functions I used in Excel wasn't available in Openoffice. I started to write a custom function in Openo
Why use crap macros when you have real scripting? (Score:2)
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Anyway I'm a big fan of doing imports via commented scripts so it's obvious lat
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I'd like to see what that includes on the labour side. I've seen proposals before showing massive savings in software purchases but it didn't account for anything else such as expert labour, training for the staff and the headaches and inefiencies that come with changing users world. Obviously once the dust settles it doesn't matter what software you have as long as it does what it needs to do for the business.
I expect that is why the migration to Office 2010 and Windows 7 was included - it would mean that both sides had a boat-load of training
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Why would they have needed to migrate to Office 2010? Office 2003 with the compatibility packs can read and write the newer office formats with the same UI that they would be familiar with. Also, Windows 7 can be made to look like XP rather trivially. Seems they are just inflating the costs of the Windows side to make LiMux look better.
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"Why would they have needed to migrate to Office 2010? Office 2003 with the compatibility packs can read and write the newer office formats with the same UI that they would be familiar with."
What makes you think they were using Office 2003 previous to this? When this project started they were talking about migrating away from Windows NT 4.
"Seems they are just inflating the costs"
Even if they could manage to stay with whatever Office version they started the migration from, there *will* be a license migrati
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There are going to be switching costs no matter which way you turn it.
Maybe they switch to new versions of Windows and/or Microsoft Office. Depending on which versions they switch from and to, this could provide for a similar or dramatically different (ribbon, metro) experience.
Maybe they switch to Linux and/or LibreOffice. Depending on where they switched from and what they switch to, this could provide a similar (e.g. pre-ribbon Office to LibreOffice) or dramatically different (e.g. NT to Unity) experienc
Re:What does it include? (Score:5, Interesting)
When I introduced my mother to Linux she was surprised how easy it was as she had heard all the scare mongering. You turn it on and get a desktop, like with Windows. You have a menu like with Windows. You click on items and the programmes start, like with Windows. Do I need to go on or do you all get the idea that she thought it was just like Windows except the really big bad difference... click once instead of twice, which she really liked. I went away and a couple of years later she was using Gimp which I had not shown her. She said she preferred Photoshop on the Mac which they had at art school. So eventually she bought a Mac and learnt another system. If a 70 year old great-granny can get through all that and not see what the fuss is about, I think it is time we starting sacking people who cannot.
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My Mother in Law, had very limited schooling, but ran a butcher shop all her life. At 67 years, she had no problem at all with Linux, Firefox, Facebook and Skype.
So, you're saying she is used to things that are cut to the bone, leaking all over the place, requires intensive work and in no way end-user friendly? :)
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You typically need less people for *nix systems since there are multiple easy ways to automate a lot of the work. Even a lot of commercial software can be "installed" by just copying a few directories from another machine and then adding the right licence file. There's a lot of stuff you only have to do once which would have to be done multiple times in a Microsoft environment even with their current level of automation (eg. the registry means y
Re:Linux may be cheaper (Score:5, Insightful)
But an incompetent Linux admin can cause far worse damage than an incompetent windows one.
I'm not sure that this is right. Certainly it depends on how you measure damage. In my opinion an incompetent linux admin will likely not have a functioning system whereas an incompetent windows admin is more likely to have an insecure system leaking information.
Re: (Score:2)
It is probably true in general. A competent Linux admin can admin far more systems than a competent windows admin. So the incompetent admin will likely have the opportunity to screw up more systems.
Re: (Score:3)
What are you talking about?
An incompetent admin on any system can lead to a total outage and a lack of access to your data and software. If your admin re-formats the drives or otherwise renders your system unusable, no matter the platform, you're still dead in the water.
In what way can a Linux admin break a machine more than a Windows admin can?
I've seen the results of incompetent admins in multiple contexts -- and no
Re: (Score:2)
But an incompetent Linux admin can cause far worse damage than an incompetent windows one.
[citation needed]
I have mod points but such a mindless blanket statement deserves more derision than just "-1 Flamebait" can convey. The potential for damage is more related to the depth and complexity of the systems, and to the administrator's skill, than the OS on which the systems are built? No?
Re: (Score:2)
and a competent Linux admin can do far more good than a competent Windows admin (or is that an oxymoron?). So the moral is hire competent people and sack incompetent people.
Re: (Score:3)
Whereas when you replace him with a compentent Linux admin, the new admin can probably clean up the files in /etc and get the systems going again. Even a good Windows admin can have a problem with trying to clean up strange behaviours with the mystery meat that is the windows registry. That means the windows guy is going to have to do forinsic work on what's on the box, what's its supposed to do, try an capture progam settings from programs that wont run and then reinstall the OS, reinstall the software and
Re:First hand experience (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a point that I think is very under-represented. I imagine a vast majority of the work people do on computers is really indifferent to the operating system being used. Most people do actual real life(tm) work, that is simply supported by a computer, where it serves the function of a glorified typewriter for purposes of simple communication. Mac, windows, linux, who cares?
The only trouble is that the people that actually are dependent on a particular system seem to be the ones that shout the loudest, sowing the seeds of uncertainty in people that would not really be that affected by a change. People are prone to waiting to see how other people fare before they jump in to anything themselves, and so no one actually changes, and Microsoft win again at charging people for something that the other guys are giving away for free!
It makes about as much sense to me as jerks who drink bottled water, but then that's another rant...(hint: you have been able to boil your own since the invention of that thing called fire)
Re: (Score:3)
You are making some incorrect assumptions. We love linux because we love working with linux.
You mention Red Hat. Red Hat makes millions on Linux but they also spend boatloads of cash employing people to work on Linux and we all benefit from that work.
The reality though is that vast vast majority of developers do not work for software companies. Developers at major software companies represent only a small portion of paid developers. Most developers work in-house or work on in-house projects as contractors.