Comments on: Munich fires up Linux at last
Local government launches the first phase of its open-source migration after a year's delay.
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I thought it was open source.
What really bothers me is the
>>"We do not have a goal to compare total cost of ownership. Microsoft stopped supporting NT 4.0, so we must migrate."
What would have been the cost of upgrading instead of migrating? And how much will it cost to maintain? At the current pace, they are on track to becoming the poster-child for an MS Get The Facts campaign.
What they're doing is spending money on re-training, education, document conversion etc. instead of wasting that money on software licenses. It was a smart move.
If Microsoft were as confident as you that they would fail, Steve Ballmer would not have tried to talk them out of it. They are afraid of Munich becoming a successful ?prototype? for other cities.
The open source software can easily handle all of the day-to-day office tasks, and the city government can easily enforce the change. It sounds like they are managing this project well. They are taking it slow, and they?ve already started at the top with the ?Lord Mayer?s department?. When all newly-purchased PCs come with Linux & Open Office, soon everyone will want to replace their old Windows PC with a shiny new Linux machine? The Windows users will feel left-behind.
[quote]?it was to attempt to reinvent the wheel[/quote] It?s called competition. Just like Microsoft went into competition with WordPerfect, and Dell went into competition with IBM. (It?s a special kind of competition, since it?s open source.)
Then, why is Microsoft so scared?
If Microsoft were as confident as you that they would fail, Steve Ballmer would not have tried to talk them out of it. They are afraid of Munich becoming a successful ?prototype? for other cities.
The open source software can easily handle all of the day-to-day office tasks, and the city government can easily enforce the change. It sounds like they are managing this project well. They are taking it slow, and they?ve already started at the top with the ?Lord Mayer?s department?. When all newly-purchased PCs come with Linux & Open Office, soon everyone will want to replace their old Windows PC with a shiny new Linux machine? The Windows users will feel left-behind.
[quote]?it was to attempt to reinvent the wheel[/quote]
It?s called competition. Just like Microsoft went into competition with WordPerfect, and Dell went into competition with IBM. (It?s a special kind of competition, since it?s open source.)
Keep waiting - though Eternity is an awful long time, y'know ;)
In the third world it might be slightly cheaper to run Linux on account of the cheap labor pools.
Linux techs and admins OTOH actually have to know what they are doing.
Sure... At ANY cost. Just don't tell the voting, tax-paying public. Keep all that information a secret so they'll never know how much they had to pay just to take a random stab at a foreign company thousands of miles away.
Sounds a bit like a movie...
[Foreign governments secretly tap public resources to further their agenda and wage a corporate battle against corporations thousands of miles away in another country. Starring: George Cloony as the foreign President, Mel Gibson as the crazy IT Director, Sean Penn as the irate anti-American corporate Lobbyist, and Rosie O'Donnell as the willing intern in a blue dress.]
ROTFLMAO!
Munich made their decision based on the same reason any large organization does - money. Even MSFT realized this when they slashed their bid by an obscene amount in a failed last-minute bid to keep from losing it to Linux.
Your employer lost. Deal with it.
Then we can look at the comparison between Munich and another city (with approximately the same size IT establishment) that was also on NT4 and stayed Windows through whenever the conversion is actually *done* and compare IT costs over the whole time.
It will be good to *know* and I can wait...
Whether or not there is immediate savings, and there likely will be, the savings over time will be enormous.
How much was the initial migration cost? This includes OS software cost, installation cost, training employees, etc...
How much is it going to cost anually to maintain this system? How reliable is it? How flexible is it? Has worker productivity been affected?
What is the total cost of ownership (TCO)?
Perhaps Cnet will compare that to TCO of other operating systems in a similar environment. I'm not making any claims, I truely want to know the answer... which isn't going to be available for awhile.
As for those who want to post their claims to my remarks... YOU DON'T KNOW. I'll wait, rather than listen to linux and MS fanboys, before the facts are available.
- It is all about avoiding the lock-in with proprietary software
- by lgmbackman September 28, 2006 9:57 AM PDT
- It seems to me that many forget the walue of geting rid of the lock-in situation with proprietary software.
- Like this Reply to this comment
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(50 Comments)Moving towards open standards and open software is a no brainer. It will be worth it in the long run.