Munich Says It's Now Shifting Back From Microsoft to Open Source Software -- Again (zdnet.com) 88
Newly-elected politicians in Munich "have decided its administration needs to use open-source software, instead of proprietary products like Microsoft Office," reports ZDNet:
"Where it is technologically and financially possible, the city will put emphasis on open standards and free open-source licensed software," a new coalition agreement negotiated between the recently elected Green party and the Social Democrats says. The agreement was finalized May 10 and the parties will be in power until 2026. "We will adhere to the principle of 'public money, public code'. That means that as long as there is no confidential or personal data involved, the source code of the city's software will also be made public," the agreement states...
Munich began the move away from proprietary software at the end of 2006... By 2013, 80% of desktops in the city's administration were meant to be running LiMux software. In reality, the council continued to run the two systems — Microsoft and LiMux — side by side for several years to deal with compatibility issues. As the result of a change in the city's government, a controversial decision was made in 2017 to leave LiMux and move back to Microsoft by 2020. At the time, critics of the decision blamed the mayor and deputy mayor and cast a suspicious eye on the US software giant's decision to move its headquarters to Munich. In interviews, a former Munich mayor, under whose administration the LiMux program began, has been candid about the efforts Microsoft went to to retain their contract with the city.
The migration back to Microsoft and to other proprietary software makers like Oracle and SAP, costing an estimated €86.1m ($93.1m), is still in progress today.
"We're very happy that they're taking on the points in the 'Public Money, Public Code' campaign we started two and a half years ago," Alex Sander, EU public policy manager at the Berlin-based Free Software Foundation Europe, tells ZDNet. But it's also important to note that this is just a statement in a coalition agreement outlining future plans, he says. "Nothing will change from one day to the next, and we wouldn't expect it to," Sander continued, noting that the city would also be waiting for ongoing software contracts to expire. "But the next time there is a new contract, we believe it should involve free software."
Munich began the move away from proprietary software at the end of 2006... By 2013, 80% of desktops in the city's administration were meant to be running LiMux software. In reality, the council continued to run the two systems — Microsoft and LiMux — side by side for several years to deal with compatibility issues. As the result of a change in the city's government, a controversial decision was made in 2017 to leave LiMux and move back to Microsoft by 2020. At the time, critics of the decision blamed the mayor and deputy mayor and cast a suspicious eye on the US software giant's decision to move its headquarters to Munich. In interviews, a former Munich mayor, under whose administration the LiMux program began, has been candid about the efforts Microsoft went to to retain their contract with the city.
The migration back to Microsoft and to other proprietary software makers like Oracle and SAP, costing an estimated €86.1m ($93.1m), is still in progress today.
"We're very happy that they're taking on the points in the 'Public Money, Public Code' campaign we started two and a half years ago," Alex Sander, EU public policy manager at the Berlin-based Free Software Foundation Europe, tells ZDNet. But it's also important to note that this is just a statement in a coalition agreement outlining future plans, he says. "Nothing will change from one day to the next, and we wouldn't expect it to," Sander continued, noting that the city would also be waiting for ongoing software contracts to expire. "But the next time there is a new contract, we believe it should involve free software."
Last time they just made a mess (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Last time they just made a mess (Score:5, Interesting)
The last time the switched to Linux, they had so many exceptions to run Windows that they were basically running 2 complete setups. So many exceptions for running particular hardware or software to get a job done they had to hire more support people to handle it. Many complaints were just things like "I get get my report to print on this printer". This was equally caused by hiring linux support who had never seen that type of printer, and didn't know how to support it. You can make the transition, but you have to realize there is a lot more overhead then just paying for software installations. A lot of training needs to be involved.
Totally unlike moving from windows 7 to windows 10. /s
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Last time they just made a mess (Score:4, Interesting)
That's what you get for skipping Windows 8.
Windows 8 was very worthy of skipping. Almost as much as vista.
Re:Last time they just made a mess (Score:5, Funny)
Not as bad as Windows 9, though. Even Microsoft skipped that one.
Re: (Score:2)
That could just be a silly jab at Microsoft, but it's honestly kind of believable as well.
Re: (Score:2)
I also heard this. The problem is not uncommon when companies get "creative" with their numbering schemes.
Re: (Score:2)
I do not think this is true. Windows uses "NT" version numbers internally.
Re: (Score:2)
If I remember right, it was mostly Java programs that blew up because Java doesn't have direct access to the Windows API and therefore couldn't query the version number directly. Instead you could request the "OS name" and get a string back like "Windows 98" which you could then try to parse.
Of course, for those that had access to the Windows API, there were still plenty of ways to screw it up. Windows XP was version 5.1, and Vista was 6.0. A lot of software did a check for XP and later along the lines o
Re:Last time they just made a mess (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, I suspect it's just a silly jab at Microsoft. You really have to look at their long history of brilliantly inconsistent Windows names to see that, even when they're just using versions numbers, they're bound to make you scratch your head and say WTF? The fact that their marketers wanted to make the last version of Windows a nice round number says a lot more about them than some obscure technical issues.
Internal Windows versions are, in fact, incredibly weirdly handled, because of... history, The original Windows API function GetVersion() returned a single DWORD, which programmers needed to split apart to extract major and minor values. You can guess where this is going. So, due to lots of programming bugs (insert stupid Windows programmer joke here), programs refused to install or run on new versions of Windows.
So, then Microsoft introduced GetVersionEx(), which returned a struct containing more explicit information. In theory, this should have been harder to screw up. Hahaha, nope. A lot of Windows programs and installers did stupid things with the Windows API version checking functions and refused to run or install on *future* versions of Windows for no good reason other than an arbitrary version check. Or a different sort of logic bug involving both major and minor versions. /facepalm
Now Microsoft says "Okay, fine. We're just not changing the Windows major version ever again." Windows, for several versions, remained at version 6, only bumping the minor version. Think this fixed things? Nope, never underestimate the ability of programmers to find a way to misuse your APIs.
Now in Windows 8, Microsoft also made a change to the Windows version checking API functions, causing them to simply lie about the version number (returning old versions), and deprecated those functions. Then they introduced a set of new version checking APIs so simple and braindead that they couldn't possibly be misused without trying really, really hard. They look like:
BOOL IsWindowsVistaOrGreater();
BOOL IsWindows7OrGreater();
BOOL IsWindows8OrGreater();
BOOL IsWindows10OrGreater();
I suspect at this point Microsoft will send out a geek hit squad to the next developer who mucks up their software's version checking, preventing it from running on future version of Windows. And honestly, they might just be within their rights to do so.
This is mostly from memory and what I've read online [microsoft.com], but I think the gist is essentially correct. I have every confidence someone will correct me if I've gotten anything at all wrong.
Re: (Score:2)
You're assuming they found the version API at all. The reason they skipped version 9 is that they were afraid some idiot had done a string comparison to the OS name and went:
if OS name starts with 'Windows 9' or OS name = 'Windows ME' then exit with error 'Sorry, Windows 95/98/ME is not supported, this software requires Windows 2K/XP or never'. They're probably not wrong.
Re: (Score:2)
they were afraid some idiot had done a string comparison to the OS name and went:
if OS name starts with 'Windows 9' or OS name = 'Windows ME' then exit with error 'Sorry, Windows 95/98/ME is not supported, this software requires Windows 2K/XP or never'. They're probably not wrong.
At the time, there were people who reported on searches in open-source repositories for occurrences such as
that returned thousands of hits.
Re: (Score:2)
There was never any corroboration from MS that this speculation had any validity at all. All that was just rampant speculation that's apparently now turned into internet mythology.
Microsoft explained the name as a marketing decision. I don't really see why they'd deliberately lie about this. There's really nothing more admirable about a marketing-based decision instead of a more pragmatic decision to retain better compatibility.
Re: (Score:2)
It was around the same period that Apple released Mac OS X. Microsoft couldn't release "Windows 9" without a direct comparison to what people called "Mac OS 10" (even though it was "X" according to Apple).
Re: (Score:2)
Mac OS X was released in 2001, same year as Windows XP.
Windows 10 was released in 2015.
Re: (Score:2)
I've only ever seen one piece of software fail to install with a version error. That piece of software was Microsoft's own Visual Studio 2010, which erroneously believes your .net version is too old if you try to install on Windows 7 or later.
Your solution doesn't actually work. That oh so simple IsWindows10OrGreater() will only return true if your application is manifested for Windows 10, which means it _cannot_ run on earlier Windows versions to begin with, rather defeating the purpose. Instead, if you ca
Re: (Score:2)
Its not even that - if the software vendor was using the microsoft api - GetVersion - it returns a regular version number.
It was a work-around for vendors who were using hacks to read the product display names - and oddly enough MS has a compatibility layer to "fix" applications that do it wrong, but I suspect that was more work.
Re: (Score:2)
It's worth explaining why, exactly, GetVersionEx() didn't help. It wasn't because the API itself was broken. It's because people were getting major and minor version number out of it, and then writing a check like this:
The first massive breakage due to this kind of stuff was when Vista shipped as 6.0 - XP was 5.1, so the minor version number decreased. This happened before for both Win9x and NT; but 9x apps generally d
Re: (Score:1)
Not as bad as Windows 9, though. Even Microsoft skipped that one.
They had the same reason as Apple who skipped OS9. OS9 is an existing trademark for another Operating System. Simple as not wanting to be sued. Can't blame either Apple or MS for this one.
Re: (Score:2)
But Apple did not skip Mac OS 9.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I can get the logic of the city moving from Linux to Windows 7, which was the best version of Windows that ever existed.
What I can't get is the city moving to Windows 10 from anything. This new move to Linux is justified, but they should also consider ChromeOS, which is at least a more standardized 'distro', which would presumably support Android apps as well. Instead of struggling w/ Linux printer drivers and so on. Or even consider OS-X: yeah, the hardware is expensive, but at least, that OS is far m
Re: Last time they just made a mess (Score:2)
ChromeOS... I hope this is a bad joke.
First of all, it is not even a real OS! Just Linux with Chrome in a special mode as its forced shell.
And second of all, this os GDPR land now. Do you really think they are gonna invite the worst data kraken since the NSA into their figurative home?
Apart from that, it is not even remotely designed for doing actual work.
It is designed for simpleton consumers to serve as a data source while Applefanning around. (Best word I could come up with, for that behavior where you d
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Uhhh didn't have a bit of trouble moving my customers from 7 to 10, in fact it was a HELL of a lot smoother than moving from XP to 7.
I'm not a sysadmin and I haven't been a regular Windows user for more than a decade, so I may be wrong here. But based on the experiences of those around me, (including enterprise users like my fiancee), I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that making the migration to Windows 10 smoother was not necessarily a good thing. Especially when "smoother" meant "we're gonna force you to do this whether you want to or not, no matter how many times you tell us no".
Every little bit of experience I've had with Win 10 leads me to believe that it's a bloated collection of spyware, adware, and shovelware with a shitty UI masquerading as an OS. I'm SO glad I'm no longer on that treadmill. The only good thing about Windows 10 is that its level of frustration may have driven more users to Linux.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
As the result of a change in the city's government, a controversial decision was made in 2017 to leave LiMux and move back to Microsoft by 2020.
In 2017 they could still be switching to Windows 7. In 2020, they're switching away from Windows 10. Shit, if someone asked me "What would you rather have on your desktop, Windows 10 or..." I'd cut them off at that point and say "whatever the other option is" without even needing to hear the specifics.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Many complaints were just things like "I get get my report to print on this printer".
Nobody actually said that.
Re: (Score:2)
Many complaints were just things like "I get get my report to print on this printer".
Nobody actually said that.
I don't think you ever met a user.
Re: (Score:1)
That will never get included in the contract, because everyone involved on all sides of the negotiation are strongly motivated to lowball the bids and the costs. Linux is particularly bad about it, because it is effectively unsupported - there's no company to call when something goes wrong - so you have to do it all in-ho
Re: Last time they just made a mess (Score:2)
Canonical and redhat don't take phone calls?
Re: Last time they just made a mess (Score:1, Insightful)
Actually, with Microsoft you can often ONLY call them. The fuckin OS doesn't even give useful logging or offer log level changes that could let anyone but them figure out the problem.
With Linux, there are many many companies offering excellent business support, and hell, if you want, you can contact the developer directly! You can even hire a developer to add whaever features you wish! If the sum is right, even the original creator! And I mean the person, not a faceless corporation.
Good luck trying any of t
Re: (Score:3)
Or it could just be a bluff, to see how much Microsoft is willing to poney up in discounts.
And even then, those discounts are only going to last for one or two years. Expect the same dance to start over the next time Munich needs to adjust its licensing contracts.
Re: (Score:2)
I guess that is one problem with year of the Linux desktop - running into a printer that doesn't work on windows isn't a thing. Granted running into printers that don't work well in general (including on Windows) is a thing.
I'm not sure how you hire support that doesn't know about printers though...
Anyhow thats the point of client management - you shouldn't hire people to do software installs - you have some orchestration software that does it for your customers and you hire people who know how to package s
Why not both? (Score:5, Interesting)
Now that Microsoft realizes it was wrong about FOSS, what's next? Thin Linux Clients to the Office365 cloud?
Re: (Score:3)
Why is Microsoft developing its own kernel?
Why is Microsoft developing its own web rendering engine?
Oh, wait.
Re: Why not both? (Score:1)
Wh is Microsoft existing?
Re: (Score:2)
To build keyboards.
Re: (Score:2)
Web rendering engines are a moving target against an external standard. Kernels are within your own direct control. The decision as an OS vendor to do one or the other are completely unrelatable.
Re: (Score:2)
Did you miss the whole story about Edge switching to Blink?
Re: Why not both? (Score:2)
Already done. Wyse terminals and thinlinux.
Re: (Score:3)
Now that Microsoft realizes it was wrong about FOSS, what's next? Thin Linux Clients to the Office365 cloud?
Not sure whether you're being sarcastic, but most of Office 365 already works* platform-agnostic in a browser. Including Teams (including video calls and desktop sharing). MS Teams even has a native Linux client.
*Some features missing and its UI response is a bit more sluggish than in a native client. But at work, we sometimes resort to simultaneous editing on Powerpoint-in-browser whenever the native Windows Powerpoint client stops syncing with the cloud for unclear reasons.
Re: (Score:2)
>"Now that Microsoft realizes it was wrong about FOSS, what's next? Thin Linux Clients to the Office365 cloud?"
Web browsers with cloud-based, sever-side apps *are* the modern form of thin clients. Done properly, it doesn't matter which browser, which OS, or which CPU you are using. Microsoft would do well to ensure they stick to standards and allow all web browsers to work with their products. This is why I am particularly annoyed by their persistence in developing their own browsers. If, for example
Re: (Score:2)
You can use Office 365 with Linux just fine.
So ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Munich employs consultants that make money off recommending and implementing the city shift from (a) closed to open source, then (b) from open to closed source, rinse and repeat. Nice scam -- I mean gig.
Probably not (Score:1)
More precisely: (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft specifically "formed an alliance" with (aka paid) those consultants from KPMG, to recommend Microsoft. Not just to Munich.
https://home.kpmg/de/de/home/d... [home.kpmg]
If I were a politician from Munich, I would launch a criminal investigation into this, with surprise searchings of both KPMG and Microsoft offices and servers.
Waybacked ... (Score:1)
... in case this vanishes from history:
https://web.archive.org/save/h... [archive.org]
At the very least... (Score:2, Insightful)
...I'd fire their dumbfuck CIO.
I mean, look: there's good decisions, and bad decisions. Everyone makes them, hopefully more of the former, less of the latter.
BUT NO ORGANIZATION CAN BE SUCCESSFUL WITH CONSTANT FLIP-FLOPPERY.
But then this is a 'negotiated' policy from the Social Democrats and the Greens - neither of whom really care about, y'know, a functional city government that delivers services efficiently and cheaply. No, it's about signaling.
Re: (Score:2)
>"BUT NO ORGANIZATION CAN BE SUCCESSFUL WITH CONSTANT FLIP-FLOPPERY."
Indeed. Had Munich stuck with their original plan, it is likely they would have resolved most of their problems by now and things would be stable and efficient. Then they would finally start reaping the many rewards of being OSS/Linux-based. Plus, it would have stimulated more commercial software vendors to start seriously considering porting their stuff in ways to make it compatible; making it even easier for other entities to perfo
Scala Johansson (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:1)
Change is eternal (Score:2)
-- Schopenhauer
Base decisions on tech not politics (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
With Microsoft, you have a re
Re: (Score:2)
With commercial solutions you get a large developer and support staff pool much larger than the city of Munich could support, which is very financially motivated to support what the customer needs, or else they lose revenue. With free-for-all open source you get freedom to do and support absolutely anything and everything you could ever imagine, as long someone else wrote it already and it matches 100% what you want, or if you write and support it yourself. Over the years I've seen so many Linux vs Windows
Re: (Score:2)
There is already an entire open-source industry. No need to create it.
Re: (Score:2)
They keep flip flopping because they are doing this for political rather than technical or financial reasons. If they'd worked harder on solidifying the technical and financial case we won't be seeing Slashdot articles in a few years time discussing how they are all in with Office 365.
As opposed to most organizations that make their technical decisions on purely technical reasons?
Hello, IMHO guy! (Score:2)
Didn't know you worked at Microsoft.
With the craziness, I should have figured though.
Follow the money. (Score:3, Insightful)
No one runs proprietary software out of altruism.
Which politicians profited from Windows and are they still in office? What appointed officials, what local businesses with political pull and who else has financial stake in "Munich on Windows"?
Find the Windows advocates and you'll find the corruption.
Microshills don't downmod out of altruism (Score:2)
Have a supporting link kindly provided by BAReFO0t in another post.
https://home.kpmg/de/de/home/d... [home.kpmg]
Microsoft is Open Source (Score:2, Interesting)
A lot of key technologies from Microsoft are now open source: MS-DOS 2.0 [github.com], GW-BASIC [github.com], Windows File Manager [github.com], Window console [github.com], and much more.
It was only a lapse, due to KPMG-Microsoft allianc (Score:1)
Microsoft specifically paid KPMG to "recommend" using MS to the politicians who had asked KPMG to tell them the best course of action. (Which is a crime in my eyes.)
I guess the politicians that are now in power caught on to it, or aren't part of the old boys club.
I hope they added "and *stay* dead!" at the end. ;)
Wholesale change is the problem. (Score:2)
Really how something like this should be managed is as an evolution. New services should be based on open source where possible and if an open source project does not meet their need they should look at the costs of a license for a commercial package and see if spending that money on a developer to make the necessary changes
Just make it look like everyone is happy (Score:1)
Well when they switch back to Windows next time they need to budget lots of money for social media bots so that every comment is positive about how great vendor XYZ is and how low the cost is on this expensive commercial software. Like how twitter bots are used for 45-60% of the COVID-19 propaganda posts to open up the USA and stop the lock-down. Bots are cheap and it is not lying or un-ethical to use them to make the appearance of facts.
In the USA all social media platforms allow just one political party
This apparently was an intermission ... (Score:3)
... brought about by a few IT dimwits higher up the political foodchain.
Basically everyone in the administration and the other parties (and some inside the party) agreed rewinding LiMux was a really dumb proposition. The backlash must have been epic. I and everyone else I know is glad they turned back and business can go on as usual.
One of the catchphrases that came out of this is "Oeffentliches Geld, oeffentlicher Code!" which means "Public Money, public code!". Spot on I'd say and now a political catchphrase catching on in other areas of Germanys digitisation.
Nice. Like it.
Translation (Score:3)
Does anyone have an English language version of the article where the Mayor talks about Microsoft's efforts to subvert the switch to Linux?
Re: (Score:1)
Hard to say if such thing exists, better simply use DeepL.
Does not have to all or nothing (Score:2)
Whence all the applications are Open Source, it's much easier to then migrate desktops to OSS, (Linux, *BSD, whatever
What did you expect (Score:5, Insightful)
where is all the news now? (Score:3)
when they switched back to MS products you couldn't visit a news site that didn't report on it, even some non-tech news site ran that story.
now that they are abandoning MS and going back to FOSS, it's not even half of the coverage.
Hey! Maybe... (Score:1)
Oh! Wait!!! They DO in Windows 10!
Well, what do ya know?! MS is on top of keeping their lucrative contracts in place!
Imagine that! MS supporting Open Source - for a fee!