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The city of Munich tried to develop a Linux distribution "Limux" that was used for some time, but political considerations ultimately reversed the decision. ht

by sddfd 8y ago

The city of Munich tried to develop a Linux distribution "Limux" that was used for some time, but political considerations ultimately reversed the decision. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux

em3rgent0rdr 8y ago
Munich did that, but they didn't do the second part of parent's suggestion: "and they invested it in an open source office suite..." Surely most of the problems with the opensource tools they were using could have been resolved by helping the opensource projects fix bugs.
- lbeltrame 8y ago
  > Surely most of the problems with the opensource tools they were using could have been resolved by helping the opensource projects fix bugs. Actually LiMux did that. From an external PoV, I saw quite a number of commits coming from LiMux sponsored people in a few FOSS projects I follow.
- scirocco 8y ago
  Yup. Going open source requires a shift in mindset when handling support issues. Coming from a paralyzed, complaining-to-vendor position, into taking responsibility and fixing the problems yourself.
- johannes1234321 8y ago
  For so.e of the problems that is the case. Some of fheproblems were that no other municipality joined them in the effort, which leaves them a sole fighter in a world where they have to use software provided by other authorities. One example is ordering a passport was initially setup by running the software provided by the federal administration via terminal server, however the. Finger prints were added to passports so the setup didn't work anymore and even being "the largest municipality in Germany" (cities of Berlin and Hamburg are larger, but they delegated more municipality tasks to the districts and are also states) doesn't give them much leverage. They way the decision came into play is crazy however. Just around the elections Microsoft moved their German headquarters from outside the city into the city and the next elected deputy mayor from the conservative party was disappointed that it took much time to get an official mobile phone from the IT department and setting up mail on that device was complicated ... not idea how that's related to desktops, but that triggered the debate ...
gronne 8y ago
Thats a nice way of putting cronyism, lobbyism and tech-iliteratism.
- coldtea 8y ago
  Or just employees got fed up with the "almost but not quite there" compatibility, and unpolished functionality, and wanted to return to MS Office. I've got a CS degree, have used Linux since 1998, used and developed for several commercial unices, and have used Open Office since it was Sun's. I still prefer MS Office.
  - merb 8y ago
    not in this case. people coming from office 2003 have a hard time with 2010 or higher. it had a lot of things to do with smartphones which are problematic in the windows environment aswell. also germany builds more and more web interfaces for administrative work.
  - gronne 8y ago
    Since LibreOffice 4.5ish I have preferred both writer and calc. Feels more robust and consistent + a lot snappier (incl. starttime). I only use it for collaborative editing of docx and xlsx.
    - maltalex 8y ago
      Were you using it for documents in English? Because I don't know about German specifically, but with some languages, Libre office is very buggy.
      - ptman 8y ago
        Star division was german, I'm quite sure it works well with german. ( star office -> open office -> libre office )
- qha 8y ago
  That's true, there was cronyism. For example, they used the worse, slower KDE instead of better options like MATE because KDE has a considerable European (and even German) legacy. I imagine they took many decisions like that. Take a computer that used to run Windows 2000 and install KDE on it, it's no wonder people got pissed and they had to revert their decision.
MrBuddyCasino 8y ago
> political considerations ultimately reversed the decision Thats a very one-sided portrayal of the situation. There were problems regarding usability, the resulting low user acceptance and issues with external MS Office files due to compatibility bugs. If anything, funding the project for so long was a symptom of putting ideological and political considerations before user needs. I find it very weird how even most software developers prefer MBPs with MS Office on them, but some poor souls elsewhere are supposed to do their daily work on a sub-standard platform. I mean we're still joking about the "Year of the Linux Desktop".
- 29athrowaway 8y ago
  The EU asked for the standardization of Microsoft Office file formats, and the "Office Open XML" format (OOXML for short) was created (ECMA-376). The resulting standard was 6,546 pages long (in comparison, ODF is just 867 pages long), and Microsoft Office was not fully compliant with it, making the entire process a waste of time. 10 years later situation is the same. It is reasonable to believe that interoperability and standardization were not in the best interest of Microsoft. They have the largest market share and they have not much to win by giving opportunities to competitors. You can read more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardization_of_Office_Open_XML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardization_of_Office_Open...

by sddfd 8y ago

em3rgent0rdr 8y ago

Munich did that, but they didn't do the second part of parent's suggestion: "and they invested it in an open source office suite..." Surely most of the problems with the opensource tools they were using could have been resolved by helping the opensource projects fix bugs.

lbeltrame 8y ago
> Surely most of the problems with the opensource tools they were using could have been resolved by helping the opensource projects fix bugs. Actually LiMux did that. From an external PoV, I saw quite a number of commits coming from LiMux sponsored people in a few FOSS projects I follow.
scirocco 8y ago
Yup. Going open source requires a shift in mindset when handling support issues. Coming from a paralyzed, complaining-to-vendor position, into taking responsibility and fixing the problems yourself.
johannes1234321 8y ago
For so.e of the problems that is the case. Some of fheproblems were that no other municipality joined them in the effort, which leaves them a sole fighter in a world where they have to use software provided by other authorities. One example is ordering a passport was initially setup by running the software provided by the federal administration via terminal server, however the. Finger prints were added to passports so the setup didn't work anymore and even being "the largest municipality in Germany" (cities of Berlin and Hamburg are larger, but they delegated more municipality tasks to the districts and are also states) doesn't give them much leverage. They way the decision came into play is crazy however. Just around the elections Microsoft moved their German headquarters from outside the city into the city and the next elected deputy mayor from the conservative party was disappointed that it took much time to get an official mobile phone from the IT department and setting up mail on that device was complicated ... not idea how that's related to desktops, but that triggered the debate ...

gronne 8y ago

Thats a nice way of putting cronyism, lobbyism and tech-iliteratism.

coldtea 8y ago
Or just employees got fed up with the "almost but not quite there" compatibility, and unpolished functionality, and wanted to return to MS Office. I've got a CS degree, have used Linux since 1998, used and developed for several commercial unices, and have used Open Office since it was Sun's. I still prefer MS Office.
- merb 8y ago
  not in this case. people coming from office 2003 have a hard time with 2010 or higher. it had a lot of things to do with smartphones which are problematic in the windows environment aswell. also germany builds more and more web interfaces for administrative work.
- gronne 8y ago
  Since LibreOffice 4.5ish I have preferred both writer and calc. Feels more robust and consistent + a lot snappier (incl. starttime). I only use it for collaborative editing of docx and xlsx.
  - maltalex 8y ago
    Were you using it for documents in English? Because I don't know about German specifically, but with some languages, Libre office is very buggy.
    - ptman 8y ago
      Star division was german, I'm quite sure it works well with german. ( star office -> open office -> libre office )
qha 8y ago
That's true, there was cronyism. For example, they used the worse, slower KDE instead of better options like MATE because KDE has a considerable European (and even German) legacy. I imagine they took many decisions like that. Take a computer that used to run Windows 2000 and install KDE on it, it's no wonder people got pissed and they had to revert their decision.

MrBuddyCasino 8y ago

> political considerations ultimately reversed the decision Thats a very one-sided portrayal of the situation. There were problems regarding usability, the resulting low user acceptance and issues with external MS Office files due to compatibility bugs. If anything, funding the project for so long was a symptom of putting ideological and political considerations before user needs. I find it very weird how even most software developers prefer MBPs with MS Office on them, but some poor souls elsewhere are supposed to do their daily work on a sub-standard platform. I mean we're still joking about the "Year of the Linux Desktop".

29athrowaway 8y ago
The EU asked for the standardization of Microsoft Office file formats, and the "Office Open XML" format (OOXML for short) was created (ECMA-376). The resulting standard was 6,546 pages long (in comparison, ODF is just 867 pages long), and Microsoft Office was not fully compliant with it, making the entire process a waste of time. 10 years later situation is the same. It is reasonable to believe that interoperability and standardization were not in the best interest of Microsoft. They have the largest market share and they have not much to win by giving opportunities to competitors. You can read more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardization_of_Office_Open_XML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardization_of_Office_Open...