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Munich dumps proprietary for open source (again) – but no Linux desktop

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Munich dumps proprietary for open source (again) – but no Linux desktop

Open source in the public sector doesn’t fail because of technical issues. It fails because it’s not aligned with the political agenda

PRAGUE — At Open Source Summit Europe, Dr. Laura Dornheim, Munich’s chief digital officer, said in her keynote speech that Munich abandoned its LiMux Linux desktop deployment for Windows over a decade ago because of politics, but now it’s returning to open-source software.

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It’s not returning to the Linux desktop, however — not yet, anyway. Instead, it’s switching its infrastructure programs from proprietary software to open-source software.  For example, it’s replacing VMware with Proxmox, moving from Jira and Confluence to OpenProject and XWiki, and adopting PostgreSQL as an alternative to Oracle databases.

The two infrastructure and collaboration migrations alone are expected to save roughly €1.5 million or more annually.

Taken together, these projects illustrate the difference between Munich’s first Linux campaign and its current approach. Rather than making desktop Linux its center pole, the city is replacing individual layers of proprietary infrastructure where it can make a practical case.

So, this comeback is not a wholesale resurrection of LiMux, the Debian/Kubuntu Linux desktop project that made Munich the Linux desktop standard-bearer between 2003 and 2013. Besides, Dornheim added, dealing with the elephant in the room, “So [if LiMux] was a success, why is it not alive anymore? Not because of technical issues.” So, what changed?  

Dornheim explained it was all politics.



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