
New Munich city government agrees to use open source software where possible - em-bee
https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-not-windows-why-munich-is-shifting-back-from-microsoft-to-open-source-again/
======
OrangeTux
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 Monate ganz auf die Fortentwicklung eines Open
> Source-Projektes kon-zentrieren möchten, können sich dafür auf ein
> städtisches bezahltes Stipendium bewerben. Die Projekte müssen einen
> kommunalen Nutzen haben.

[1]: [https://www.gruene-muenchen.de/wp-
content/uploads/2020/04/Dr...](https://www.gruene-muenchen.de/wp-
content/uploads/2020/04/Druckfassung_Koalitionsvertrag-2020_2026.pdf)

~~~
TulliusCicero
Interesting. How much will they pay them, though?

~~~
lustigmacher
The document doesn’t say how much. I guess, it’s just an umbrella document.
More detailed regulations will be eventually adopted. That said, my estimate
would be 500€ max per month.

~~~
em-bee
that would not work. 500€ is not enough to pay rent in most places.

it would have to something that covers your current living expenses, no matter
how high they are, because unless you are young and single with a lot of
flexibility, you are not going to be able to put a hold on all those expenses.

therefore the two reasonable options are: the government continues to pay your
current salary, or it pays what you'd get if they'd hire you. the latter would
disadvantage high earners, but that is somewhat reasonable.

anything less would unlikely get any people interested.

------
acd
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.

~~~
mikekchar
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.

~~~
Brian_K_White
Same governmemt can spend the same money within the same local economy by
paying programmers. There is no _valid_ reason and not that many "reasonable
points of view" about paying a private company 5000 times over for the same
piece of software, and still not owning it or being able to get full
functionality out of it or being able to see into it or your taxpayers (who
are subject to it's operation) being able to see into it, vs paying
programmers to write the same thing _1_ times over and then you DO own it and
can get full functionality out of it and can see into it, and every town in
your whole country can use it with no legal burden, no audits, no broken
license mangers... And tomorrow, instead of paying for another 100 copies of
the same license yet again, you can pay those programmers to make what you
have even better or build the next new thing.

There is no valid reason to just pay rent to anyone for nothing, even if they
are a local company. That's not a good enough reason.

------
type0
> As yet, none of the big players appears to have lost significant business to
> the free software movement in Germany. But it seems likely that commercial
> vendors will have a tougher time here in the near future.

Free software and open source doesn't mean non-commercial. SUSE in Germany
provides commercial support to their distro for example. Such a weird article,
zdnet doesn't getting any better...

~~~
blaser-waffle
Yeah the US Fed Gov loves linux, and Red Hat is all over the place.

------
sokoloff
I think the “Public money => public code” is a stronger (and arguably more
interesting) piece of content in the article.

~~~
fsflover
Direct link to the petition: [https://publiccode.eu](https://publiccode.eu)

------
therealmarv
The last u-turn was only decided by a bunch of politicians who like Microsoft
Windows privately more than Linux.

This is all politics. Nothing more...

------
panpanna
Just please don't create your own distro this time.

I'm sure Canonical would happily hier some devs from Munich to make this look
local.

~~~
bmn__
Limux is not its own distro, just a Debian/Ubuntu with additional branding and
a few pieces of bundled software in an apt repo.

------
boomboomsubban
I can't imagine any US party echoing the FSF's statement, even if just in a
statement of political intent. It's impressive that the movement has enough
public interest to make platitudes worthwhile in Germany.

~~~
tpush
The FOSS movement in Germany always seemed to me a tiny bit more mainstream
than the one in the US. Tech publications report more on Linux happenings (as
opposed to the sometimes intense Apple focus of US tech publications).

Linux also has more market share in Germany than any other western country, I
think.

~~~
xfiz
According to statcounter, Germany has the highest usage of Firefox and fourth
highest usage of Linux (behind Ireland, Greece and Luxembourg) among European
and North American countries. Additionally, you have the Chaos Computer Club,
which is somewhat prominent and could influence the thinking about FOSS.

------
tuukkah
Key quote: "So these kinds of decisions must come down to political
philosophies about the marketplace as well as increasingly important issues
like digital sovereignty. This issue is one reason why this time Munich is
unlikely – or any other German city or state – to flip-flop on open-source
software decisions again. "

------
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](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.

~~~
m4r35n357
Bean counters prefer to pay others to "make those problems seem to go away".

------
gryzzly
In case of government spend it is hard for me to comprehend why almost no
place in the world has fully open source gov technology. Governments
everywhere spend these insane amounts on really bad software :/

~~~
Zhyl
The sad reality is that there just isn't enough awareness or understanding of
technology within Government to make it onto the agenda. The exceptions of
this are little pockets of like-minded individuals such as GDS [1] who have
done some exemplary work on open sourcing tech.

The downside is that much of the 'trunk' of IT (workstations, Business
Software, internal systems) are still contracted out to monolithic, old-school
contractors who have no incentive to innovate by non-technical procurement
teams. This leads to a culture of proprietary software where the
established/expensive solutions are seen as the most trustworthy and there
isn't any cost to vendor lock-in or non-interoperability of systems until the
next tranche of officials have taken over and all of those issues can be
written off as 'legacy' and as a sunk cost.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Digital_Service](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Digital_Service)

~~~
vharuck
As a state government worker, this jives with my experience. The ultimate
beneficiaries of any budget savings or improved processes are citizens who
have no idea, let alone input, about what we're doing behind the scenes. It's
very hard to convince public employees to work with those people in mind.
You're right, the people buying the software are even harder to convince. With
no good measures of effect, they rely on what's easiest for them. So Microsoft
and PDFs everywhere.

Our software licenses are paid through a grant from the federal government. If
we replace them with open source software, we don't get to keep the
difference. So now I have licensed software like SAS and ArcGIS gathering dust
on my machine while I use R and Python.

And sharing software we develop is even harder. I've pushed to release code
for my statistical reports. When I said researchers and other states could
benefit by reusing parts, my supervisors only saw it as a liability with no
benefit to us. I might try to slip it in as part of the technical notes.

------
redleggedfrog
I suspect this time they will be able to make it stick, even if a new
government comes into power in following years. The options, particular for
desktop linux, have gotten better since the last time they tried it.

------
MaxBarraclough
Wasn't so long since their last U-turn, switching from Linux to Windows 10
around 2018.

[https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-champion-munich-will-
swi...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-champion-munich-will-switch-to-
windows-10-in-50m-rollout/) , [https://www.techrepublic.com/article/end-of-an-
open-source-e...](https://www.techrepublic.com/article/end-of-an-open-source-
era-linux-pioneer-munich-confirms-switch-to-windows-10/)

~~~
kleiba
Yes, as discussed in the article.

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ARandomerDude
> wherever possible

This reminds me of a quote by the character Humphrey Appleby on "Yes,
Minister" ("The Office"-like sitcom about government):

"Almost anything can be attacked as a loss of amenity. And almost anything can
be defended as not a _significant_ loss of amenity."

------
imchillyb
...Until they're voted out and replaced with those who are against 'hacker
software'.

This is the same ol' carousel we've been going round and round on now for more
than 2 decades.

Some people 'get' free and open software, the other people run our world.

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

~~~
cpach
I seem to recall hearing the City of Munich considering FOSS for the past
15-20 years or so :)

~~~
nelaboras
No, they were implementing it at scale for 10+ years. There was an issue with
lots of incompatible legacy software so they were still using windows as well
but >50% of desks were Linux only.

Then in a very short timespan (1) a new conservative city government came in,
(2) Microsoft announced a big local office and (3) the new government killed
the open source project without warning and anlunced they'd switch everything
to windows 10.

This transition back to windows is now still ongoing and as contracts are
signed will not really be feasible to stop. The now new-new Green+social
democratic government makes noe a pledge to take open source seriously for all
future needs (and I suppose switch back to a Linux asap).

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jsnider3
Beautiful.

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brutal_chaos_
Except they didn't. It's just a campaign to strongly consider open source
software in future contracts. Currently, there is a contract with Microsoft
that isn't ending just yet. So they will have a mix of LiMux and Windows for
the foreseeable future.

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seemslegit
This is a bluff that almost every government and municipality with huge
contracts with MS does whenever they come up for renewal as part of their
negotiations, nobody in MS is impressed.

In other news: 2020 is not the year of the linux desktop.

~~~
dijit
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.

~~~
seemslegit
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

~~~
loudmax
> 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.

~~~
seemslegit
> That should be "offering" singular, not "offerings" plural.

Why ? An ecosystem consists of multiple offerings and there are also multiple
commercial ecosystems.

> 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.

Being able to finance something is an inherent part of its feasibility.

