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New Munich city government agrees to use open source software where possible

zdnet.com

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Re: New Munich city government agrees to use open source software where possible

#31

Post by eesmith »

beefield wrote: post #20
dijit wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pessimistically, I agree with you. But that lends the question; what does it take to end the Microsoft monopoly on our governments? It can’t just be open document standards. I think it goes further than that; into our schools maybe. I don’t have answers, but it’s a serious question I have.

You could make it illegal to price discriminate on software sales. I.e, if you sell a piece of software at one unit price to someone, you are obliged to sell with that price to anyone who wants it. Obviously that would disrupt quite a few existing business models in software industry, so do not take that as a completely serious proposal.

Year ago I remember learning about appliance stores who advertise "lowest prices guaranteed!"

More specifically, if you can find another place which sells the same model for less, then you get it for the other price.

Thing is, they are the only seller of that model. The vendor has a model X123 for that shop, a model X124 for another place, etc. And that shop is the only one who can sell that specific model. So they of course have the lowest price.

Something similar exists for software: that's why there's "home" and "office" and "professional" and "enterprise" and so many other variants.

So, your "home" version only supports 2 connections at a time, your "office" one doesn't implement a certain function that "professionals" are more likely to use, and your "enterprise" defaults to logging. Even better, with software you can have a unique product for each sale.

All different pieces of software, so all different prices.

Then on top of that, you don't sell the software but software + support. And the support costs can vary.

Which means I think it's easy to bypass your hypothetical restriction.

Re: New Munich city government agrees to use open source software where possible

#32

Post by loudmax »

seemslegit wrote: post #19
dijit wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pessimistically, I agree with you. But that lends the question; what does it take to end the Microsoft monopoly on our governments? It can’t just be open document standards. I think it goes further than that; into our schools maybe. I don’t have answers, but it’s a serious question I have.

Easy, just create a software ecosystem that is superior to or at least on-par with the commercial offerings (being open source is not by itself valuable for the users), then grow a generation of non-technical users into that ecosystem

> on-par with the commercial offerings

That should be "offering" singular, not "offerings" plural.

And it's totally feasible to produce a superior ecosystem. The hard part is absorbing years of financial loss while building the new ecosystem from the ground up while it isn't compatible with the existing proprietary system.

Re: New Munich city government agrees to use open source software where possible

#33

Post by tuukkah »

OrangeTux wrote: post #13

There is another interesting section in the document[1]. The city introduces the "Munich Open Source Sabatical". The city will pay professional programmers for 3 till 6 months to work on open source projects that benefit the community. > Die Stadt München unterstützt die Entwicklung von Open Source-Projekten mit einem "Munich Open Source Sabbatical". Professionelle Programmierer*innen, die sich für drei oder sechs Mo…

I hope they will work together with Code for Germany to multiply the impact: https://www.codefor.de/en/

Re: New Munich city government agrees to use open source software where possible

#34

Post by dijit »

seemslegit wrote: post #19
dijit wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pessimistically, I agree with you. But that lends the question; what does it take to end the Microsoft monopoly on our governments? It can’t just be open document standards. I think it goes further than that; into our schools maybe. I don’t have answers, but it’s a serious question I have.

Easy, just create a software ecosystem that is superior to or at least on-par with the commercial offerings (being open source is not by itself valuable for the users), then grow a generation of non-technical users into that ecosystem

I think that this is not a charitable interpretation of the situation.

While I generally agree that FOSS software (Libreoffice calc) is inferior for business needs, a _lot_ of the issues actually stem from compatibility.

Not just compatibility of the document system and interpretation, though that is a large part. But compatibility of functionality too, along with UI design.

People are more likely to re-train for a new UI on a new edition of their previous software because it is seen to them as a progression, but they are not so open to changing UI paradigms with different software that does the same thing.

In order for something "better" to be accepted it has to not just be better- it has to be _so_ much better that it trumps everything else.

in the very best of cases it has to be 100% compatible in all areas and _still_ at least substantially better.

That's without getting in to opensource financing, which is a difficult topic. Though I can imagine if Munich put their resources into a FOSS foundation which was providing productivity software it would help tremendously. I don't think they're going to do that because Linux (and ecosystem) is seen as cheaper, so why negate the cost saving?

Re: New Munich city government agrees to use open source software where possible

#35

Post by luckylion »

acd wrote: post #22

Governments should develop and run opensource systems. That way different governments can collaborate to build better systems through open innovation. Not wasting tax payers money on closed source. I bet tax and pension systems have the same basic requirements cross countries with some local specifics.

That would also put the risk on the government though. What if their software is shit? Tax money wasted.

Buying software has the benefit that the manufacturer carries the risk.

Imho, they should set standards, APIs, file formats etc to enable competition and keep vendor lock-in to a minimum.

Re: New Munich city government agrees to use open source software where possible

#36

Post by bitL »

mschuster91 wrote: post #18
buran77 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From my personal experience most times the hardest part is to convince the users. You can throw a lot of resources at the migration, money, good technical experts, and get it done right. But making the regular users happy? That's a whole different subject. Truth is most users still run Windows at home and are familiar with it. Getting used to something else will meet some resistance. Then you have the minor compatibi…

> From my personal experience most times the hardest part is to convince the users. Former actual LiMux team member here, so I can speak from experience (almost a decade ago though). The hardest part was convince users to be happy on utterly inadequate and aged hardware . No, 1 GB of RAM won't cut it when you have to have Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice and some fucking Java crap open at the same time, and 1024x768…

Yeah, that must have been a huge problem. These days however an OKayish notebook can be had for $400 or an i3 NUC with 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD with an IPS 1080p monitor for $500, and those would run any Linux well for foreseeable future without killing city's budget.

Re: New Munich city government agrees to use open source software where possible

#37

Post by flohofwoe »

xvilka wrote: post #27

After one lie they have zero trust. Most likely just trying to negotiate lower prices for Microsoft licenses.

Maybe the difference to last time is that the Greens are now the strongest party? I guess they are not as easily "lobby-able" by Microsoft as the others.

Re: New Munich city government agrees to use open source software where possible

#38

Post by em-bee »

mikekchar wrote: post #24
acd wrote: post #22

Governments should develop and run opensource systems. That way different governments can collaborate to build better systems through open innovation. Not wasting tax payers money on closed source. I bet tax and pension systems have the same basic requirements cross countries with some local specifics.

While I completely agree with you, there is a compelling argument for governments spending tax payer money on goods from local companies rather than competing with them. Of course, I don't think I would class MS as a "local company" for Munich ;-). I'm just saying that there are lots of reasonable points of view on this topic.

how is hiring local developers as employees any different from outsourcing to a local company? if the city is developing software then it is surely something that doesn't already exist, and when they do they are also not selling it, so i see no competition there.

if the goal is to create jobs, then that also happens either way. i don't see the problem.

Re: New Munich city government agrees to use open source software where possible

#39

Post by dntbnmpls »

Munich made headlines for deciding to switch to linux in 2003 and decided to go back to windows in 2018.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux

I still don't understand why major nations don't create or help create national OSes for their own countries/industries. You would think an OS is national security issue at the very least. A municipality isn't going to cut it. It's going to require a major national effort to stave off a monopoly like microsoft.

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