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City of Barcelona moving away from proprietary software

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Re: City of Barcelona moving away from proprietary software

#31

Post by luma »

icc97 wrote: post #25
dogma1138 wrote: post #2

Hopefully it would work out better than in Munich.

It actually gives strength to what Munich did. They proved that it was possible to swap. So Barcelona doesn't have such a political tricky situation as there is a pre-existing example. Let's hope that more follow Barcelona. Barcelona is possibly taking an easier approach. That is, replace the easier things like Office and IE. I've done similar things. So where as my software has to use IIS and Windows servers, I use…

I'm not sure how Munich "proved it was possible". The user community disliked it so much they are now switching back. They proved that it cost the city a lot of money in the transition (both times), and those costs have nothing to do with licensing. "Free" is only "free" so long as you and your user's time carries no value.

Re: City of Barcelona moving away from proprietary software

#33

Post by wastedhours »

criddell wrote: post #27
wastedhours wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to start in education - MS has had that locked down for decades. It'll be really interesting to see whether ChromeOS will have any impact in the future when an entire generation has been using it daily for schoolwork.

I think education as an influencer is overrated. At my kids' school, they really don't care what hardware you use, as long as Google Docs works on it. If you don't have your own computer, the school will rent you a ThinkPad for $70 per year (including the summer) but they are really awful machines. A lot of people buy their own hardware.

That's precisely my point though (I could have made a better job of explaining I wasn't just talking about hardware/OS) - "as long as Google Docs works on it". Those kids will go into the world of work with knowledge of GDocs innately.

That position has been Office for the best part of 20 years, it's baked into syllabuses, exams, training materials. If that changes, it potentially has huge impact going forwards.

Re: City of Barcelona moving away from proprietary software

#34

Post by unmango »

snvzz wrote: post #28

I'm Catalan. Catalonia has always been big on open source, and if anything I'm surprised this took so long to happen. The mindshare in universities and such is particularly high, and this isn't limited to computer science (my background). Even my high school did at the very least run a Linux server (running at least samba and squid) and had a few Linux workstations. This was 20 years ago. Back when I lived there, I w…

People in universities (both staff and students) are always left-leaning; the mindshare of Linux in universities has always been big everywhere, it's not really a Catalan thing. Because of that, I'm not surprised they are enthusiastic about the Catalan language either, but that's not the case anywhere else, where people usually run their software and enjoy their entertainment in Spanish without making a big deal about the language.

I also believe Windows 10 has a good Catalan translation although I have never used it.

Re: City of Barcelona moving away from proprietary software

#35

Post by snvzz »

dogma1138 wrote: post #2

Hopefully it would work out better than in Munich.

There's the Munich experience and the Extremadura experience, so there's mistakes Barcelona can avoid.

I hear they're using a popular distribution (Ubuntu) rather than trying to make and maintain a forked one. This is a very clever choice that will save a tremendous amount of pain.

Re: City of Barcelona moving away from proprietary software

#36

Post by nofilter »

snvzz wrote: post #28

I'm Catalan. Catalonia has always been big on open source, and if anything I'm surprised this took so long to happen. The mindshare in universities and such is particularly high, and this isn't limited to computer science (my background). Even my high school did at the very least run a Linux server (running at least samba and squid) and had a few Linux workstations. This was 20 years ago. Back when I lived there, I w…

Well, I'm Estonian living in Barcelona. A lot of things never bother to add Estonian support because we're such a tiny nation (like iOS, for example) which means our English is rather good. Good English is not something I've encountered much in Catalonia, so while yes I agree that having your country's technology work in your language is a must, it's also in my opinion a double-edged sword making more and more local people not speak English.

Re: City of Barcelona moving away from proprietary software

#37

Post by a254613e »

cies wrote: post #14
kartan wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the link. "Those supporting the move to Microsoft Office say staff using LibreOffice find it difficult to swap documents with external organizations, due to incompatibilities with Microsoft Office" This happens all around the industry. Once you are locked in there is no easy way to change. This renders the capitalist concept of competition obsolete. Everything becomes a monopoly. Intel, Nvidia, Facebook, M…

I thought Munnich's decision was also in part because MSFT would consider Munnich as a location for an office based on their decision on using their product to do their work. The old "we have to serve the corps (and their owners) or they leave" argument.

Microsoft decided to move their HQ to Munich years before this.

In fact the year the construction of MS HQ started Munich voted to start planning the move to LiMux.

Re: City of Barcelona moving away from proprietary software

#38

Post by tzahola »

adwhit wrote: post #19

I kind of amazed that Microsoft are still successfully charging SO MUCH for their absolutely run-of-the-mill OS and Office products. Office, in particular, brings in something like $25bn/year revenue with presumably very healthy margins. For a product that has hardly changed in 20 years. It's a good product, sure. But a clean-room reimplementation of the bits that people actually care about surely couldn't cost more…

The real value is not in MS Office itself, but the ~30 years worth of mission-critical infrastructure built on top of it which MS customers can't afford to replace.

Re: City of Barcelona moving away from proprietary software

#40

Post by interfixus »

unmango wrote: post #34
snvzz wrote: post #28

I'm Catalan. Catalonia has always been big on open source, and if anything I'm surprised this took so long to happen. The mindshare in universities and such is particularly high, and this isn't limited to computer science (my background). Even my high school did at the very least run a Linux server (running at least samba and squid) and had a few Linux workstations. This was 20 years ago. Back when I lived there, I w…

People in universities (both staff and students) are always left-leaning; the mindshare of Linux in universities has always been big everywhere, it's not really a Catalan thing. Because of that, I'm not surprised they are enthusiastic about the Catalan language either, but that's not the case anywhere else, where people usually run their software and enjoy their entertainment in Spanish without making a big deal abou…

Are you equating support for open source with left-leaningness?
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