14 DAY TRIAL // Munich finished the transition to Linux from Windows and everything seemed to work just fine, at least until the current Mayor made a few comments about the possibility of returning to proprietary software. He has detailed some of his opinions and he appears to be a lot more moderate towards this issue.
The Mayor of Munich, Dieter Reiter, got himself in the middle of a very heated argument when he opinionated that the city he runs could return to proprietary software, most likely provided by Microsoft. The conclusion of those discussions wasn’t that simple, but this is what the media and the community got out of it: Munich might consider returning to Windows.
A city as big as Munich has a very large infrastructure, so moving it from one operating system to another would be extremely expensive. The Munich authorities have already said that they have managed to save millions of euros by ditching proprietary software, so the idea of getting back to Windows and spending more money seems really weird. Following the statements made by Dieter Reiter, the Green Party in Munich asked the Mayor a few direct questions about the subject in an open letter.
Munich Mayor details the city's plans
The response to the open letter addressed by the Green Party has been made public and Dieter Reiter says that a potential switch to Windows will cost the city about €3.15 million ($4 million), but this is a number for Windows 7. A Windows 8 switch would be much more costly.
He also points out that a decision to drop LiMux, the current operating system in use, also means forfeiting the funds that were invested over the years in the open source adoption and they would go down the drain.
Interestingly enough, the Mayor is not dropping the issue. He also says that an internal audit has been commissioned to find out if the IT solutions are powerful enough to meet the demands of a modern big city, if the software already implemented meets users’ demands, how efficient the IT department really is, and how much money is actually saved.
LiMux is safe for now
Soon after the first statements made by the Dieter Reiter hit the media, the IT department in Munich explained that the entire open source project had been insulated, from a legal point of view, from the actions of future mayors. It looks like they anticipated the issues that might arise with new politicians. It remains to be seen just how powerful this legal shield really is.