http://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-munich-rejected-steve-ballmer-and-kicked-microsoft-out-of-the-city/?tag=nl.e101&s_cid=e101&ttag=e101&ftag=TRE684d531
Breaking up with Microsoft is hard to do. Just ask Peter Hofmann, the man leading the City of Munich's project to ditch Windows and Office in favour of open source alternatives.
The project took close to a decade to complete, has seen the city wrestle with legal uncertainties and earned Munich a visit from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, whose pleas to the mayor of Germany's third largest city not to switch fell on deaf ears.
Munich says the move to open source has saved it more than €10m, a claim contested by Microsoft, yet Hofmann says the point of making the switch was never about money, but about freedom.
"If you are only doing a migration because you think it saves you money there's always somebody who tells you afterwards that you didn't calculate it properly," he said.
"Our main goal was to become independent."
Peter Hofmann, project lead
"That was the experience of a lot of open source-based projects that have failed," Hofmann noted. They were only cost-driven and when the organisation got more money or somebody else said 'The costs are wrong' then the main reason for doing it had broken away. That was never the main goal within the City of Munich. Our main goal was to become independent."
Munich is used to forging its own path. The city runs its own schools and is one of the few socialist, rather than conservative governments, in Bavaria.
Peter Hofmann speaks about Munich's open source migration at the Linux Tag conference in Berlin.
Image: Stefan Krempl
Becoming independent meant Munich freeing itself from closed, proprietary software, more specifically the Microsoft Windows NT operating system and the Microsoft Office suite, and a host of other locked-down technologies the city relied on in 2002.
The decision to ditch Microsoft was also born of necessity. In 2002 the council knew official support for Windows NT, the OS used on 14,000 staff machines at the council, would soon run out. The council ordered a study of the merits of switching to XP and Office versus a GNU/Linux OS, OpenOffice and other free software.
As well as being tied to Windows upgrades, Munich faced becoming more tightly locked into the Microsoft ecosystem with each passing year, Hofmann said.
"Windows has developed from a pure PC-centred operating system, like Windows 3.11 was, to a whole infrastructure. If you're staying with Microsoft you're getting more and more overwhelmed to update and change your whole IT infrastructure [to fit with Microsoft]," according to Hofmann, whether that be introducing a Microsoft Active Directory system or running a key management server.
"If you're staying with Microsoft you're getting more and more overwhelmed to update and change your whole IT infrastructure."
Peter Hofmann
Free software was ruled the better choice by Munich's ruling body, principally because it would free the council from dependence on any one vendor and future-proof the council's technology stack via open protocols, interfaces and data formats.
The prospect of such a high profile loss, and other organisations following Munich's lead, spurred Microsoft to mount a last ditch campaign to win the authority back. A senior sales executive at the time told general managers in EMEA "under NO circumstances lose against Linux." Steve Ballmer himself took time out of a skiing holiday to make a revised offer in March 2003, followed two months later by Microsoft knocking millions of Euros off the price of sticking with Windows and Office.
The lobbying failed to change Munich's mind, and in June 2004 the council gave the go-ahead to begin the migration from NT and Office 97/2000 to a Linux-based OS, a custom-version of OpenOffice, as well as a variety of free software, such as the Mozilla Firefox browser, Mozilla Thunderbird e-mail client and the Gimp photo editing software. It became known as the LiMux project, after the name for the custom Linux OS the council was rolling out.
[........]
Хотя конечно немцы порлучили для этого сильнейший козырь - чудесную вылизанную "Linux SuSe" от "Novell".
Добавлено спустя 6 минут 43 секунды:
А как вам акцент :
"That was the experience of a lot of open source-based projects that have failed," Hofmann noted. They were only cost-driven and when the organisation got more money or somebody else said 'The costs are wrong' then the main reason for doing it had broken away. That was never the main goal within the City of Munich. Our main goal was to become independent."
Munich is used to forging its own path. The city runs its own schools and is one of the few socialist, rather than conservative governments, in Bavaria.
То есть только социалистическое управление и воспитание молодежи в школах позволяет Мюнхену преодолевать буржуазных лоббистов и развиваться своим независимым путем. Браво, немцы - традиции Баварской революции живы !
Добавлено спустя 8 минут 18 секунд:
Хмм, сильный аргумент :
Windows has developed from a pure PC-centred operating system, like Windows 3.11 was, to a whole infrastructure. If you're staying with Microsoft you're getting more and more overwhelmed to update and change your whole IT infrastructure [to fit with Microsoft]
То есть поначалу подписываясь на МС-операционку, рано или поздно оказываешься втянут в большой комплект софта от МС (и оборудования, 100% умеющего работать под Вынями ) - еще и постоянно ждешь апдейтов и багфиксов к нему (которые рано или поздно прекращаются ради принуждения к покупке новых ОС и софта). Например для групп поддержки пользователей и сетевых админов это кошмар (сетевой софт от МС по функционалу и рядом не стоит оным для НИКСов).
Добавлено спустя 6 минут 29 секунд:
Амеры приняли челлендж и сражались как львы (даже пошли на большое снижение цены) :
- Код: Выделить всё
A senior sales executive at the time told general managers in EMEA "under NO circumstances lose against Linux." Steve Ballmer himself took time out of a skiing holiday to make a revised offer in March 2003, followed two months later by Microsoft knocking millions of Euros off the price of sticking with Windows and Office.
"under NO circumstances lose against Linux" в переводе = "ни при каких обстоятельствах не проиграть Линуксу".
Добавлено спустя 7 минут 50 секунд:
Социалистическое
The nature of the project had changed, from a desktop migration to cleaning up much of Munich's IT infrastructure and the way it was managed – a move in keeping with the council's motto for the project: "Quality over time".
"Качество важнее сроков" в противовес буржуазному пришпариванию "Время-деньги"
Добавлено спустя 6 минут 56 секунд:
Хмм, все-таки не Сюзи :
As would be expected, the council has had to shell out a chunk of change on getting applications to work on LiMux – a custom-build of the Ubuntu flavor of Linux – some €774,000 as of last year.
а старый добрый Дебианушка-вариант
Добавлено спустя 6 минут 48 секунд:
Ессно, все портировать не смогли, но с зависимости слезли :
The lion's share of Munich's applications, about 90 per cent, are accessible via LiMux. Most have been ported, while others are running as web apps, inside virtualised containers or via terminal servers.
A small number of apps have proven impossible to port, make accessible or switch away from – particularly software whose use is mandated by the German government – and have to be run directly on Windows machines.
While the council has weaned itself off the majority of Microsoft technologies, Munich still experiences friction where it rubs against proprietary software in widespread use elsewhere.
Подход похож на нашу контору - у нас Выни работают в виртуальных машинах.
И все-таки это возможно только при немецкой методичности настойчивости
[...]
The complexity of moving from proprietary software after years of being a Microsoft shop might explain why more organisations haven't followed in Munich's footsteps, and why some, like the German municipality of Freiburg, have given up on their own shift to open source. Last year Freiburg scrapped plans to move to OpenOffice claiming it would have cost up to €250 per seat to resolve interoperability issues.
?
Добавлено спустя 5 минут 20 секунд:
Тоже аргумент, кстати :
By choosing to swap to LiMux and OpenOffice Munich was able to keep using its old PCs for longer,
у нас в конторе еще шуршат P1- и P2-машины, и даже центральный рутер (несколько сотен коннектов) - "монстр" P2-266.
Их было бы больше если бы ихние "харды" не обсыпались.
Добавлено спустя 4 минуты 30 секунд:
"Привыкнуть к интерфейсу нового МС-оффиса" = "не меньший труд чем переучиться на OpenOffice"
"If we would have switched to Microsoft Office, the costs for the e-learning platform would have been the same, and the new GUI for MS Office would have required the same amount of training," said Hofmann.
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