City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software
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It looks like the whole issue was due to their use of some weird distro years ago.
That article technically doesn't say why they need Windows now, so for all I know they have some new weird requirements I don't know about, but assuming they don't, I think the decision to go to Windows is a horrible idea. They'd be much better off going to Ubuntu instead.
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IIRC Microsoft moved their EU headquarters, or at least their German Headquarters, to Munich not too long ago. At the time they first started talking about moving back to Windows.
It wasn't that this project was a failure, although using their own Linux OS probably was, it was that there was a ton of money invested by Microsoft and they are now seeing the return.
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@Obsolesce said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
It looks like the whole issue was due to their use of some weird distro years ago.
Definitely a HUGE factor. What crazy city would do something so dumb? Clearly they didn't do this in a serious way.
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@scottalanmiller said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
@Obsolesce said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
It looks like the whole issue was due to their use of some weird distro years ago.
Definitely a HUGE factor. What crazy city would do something so dumb? Clearly they didn't do this in a serious way.
ok, not city, but country - china is or was talking about it.
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@Dashrender said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
@scottalanmiller said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
@Obsolesce said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
It looks like the whole issue was due to their use of some weird distro years ago.
Definitely a HUGE factor. What crazy city would do something so dumb? Clearly they didn't do this in a serious way.
ok, not city, but country - china is or was talking about it.
China does it for very different reasons. And totally makes sense.
- Over a billion users, compared to 20,000.
- Built for home use, as well as work use. A universal product.
- Made available to all people, everywhere. It's a full distro and one of the biggest.
- Done specifically to provide a "Chinese Native" language platform that renders Chinese writing first because other major distros focus on Latin which renders differently. It was needed to handle the needs of the ethnic group. German writes in Latin and all normal distros are already set up for Munich.
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@scottalanmiller said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
@Obsolesce said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
It looks like the whole issue was due to their use of some weird distro years ago.
Definitely a HUGE factor. What crazy city would do something so dumb? Clearly they didn't do this in a serious way.
A city can easily staff more people than any FOSS distro. As long as they build on valid upstream and dedicate the resources (developers) it is not that hard.
Look at the Korora project. They simply took the solid base Fedora distro and tweaked it to be more user friendly. All with no paid development.
LiMux is based on Ubuntu. If it has been done like Korora was, then there is absolutely no problem with "their own distro" as you put it.
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@Dashrender said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
china is or was talking about it.
Long, long ago. It's called Deepin. Lots of us use it. It's really good and one of the biggest distros out there.
They make more than just a distro. It includes an entire language handling system, one of the best desktop environments (Deepin Desktop), and a large selection of the top desktop programs (they own terminal, media player, screen capture, image viewer, file manager, and all kinds of things.)
https://www.deepin.org/en/original/deepin-installer/
They also have their own amazingly extensive app store that you can optionally use (it's free.) With one of the broadest application lists for support anywhere.
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@JaredBusch said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
A city can easily staff more people than any FOSS distro. As long as they build on valid upstream and dedicate the resources (developers) it is not that hard.
Not hard to do, no. If you are a tech business and not directed by a city council. On a numbers basis, the city has the budget and the resources. But it doesn't have a mandate, the skills, or the structure to be able to do anything well (think Parks and Rec). It's a government. Making things isn't something its good at. A city wanting to do this would need to create a business with their resources to do it, not try to do it as a government project.
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@scottalanmiller said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
@JaredBusch said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
A city can easily staff more people than any FOSS distro. As long as they build on valid upstream and dedicate the resources (developers) it is not that hard.
Not hard to do, no. If you are a tech business and not directed by a city council. On a numbers basis, the city has the budget and the resources. But it doesn't have a mandate, the skills, or the structure to be able to do anything well (think Parks and Rec). It's a government. Making things isn't something its good at. A city wanting to do this would need to create a business with their resources to do it, not try to do it as a government project.
Show me proof that LiMux is a failed/bad OS. I've never read anything like that. But that is your key implication here.
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@JaredBusch said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
Show me proof that LiMux is a failed/bad OS. I've never read anything like that. But that is your key implication here.
My point is that it made the project unnecessarily expensive and complex.
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@scottalanmiller said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
@JaredBusch said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
Show me proof that LiMux is a failed/bad OS. I've never read anything like that. But that is your key implication here.
My point is that it made the project unnecessarily expensive and complex.
While it has to make it more complex and expensive by the fact that it is something on top of Ubuntu, I would argue that the cost over time will be lower due to standardization controls that should drastically reduce user training/retraining. More expensive on the IT side, certain. More expensive to the city, not so much.
One of the big parts of it was they used some customized version of OpenOffice, I don't recall what they called it. I also have no idea if they switched it to LibreOffice, I assume they had to.
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@JaredBusch said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
I also have no idea if they switched it to LibreOffice, I assume they had to.
OO is still out there, kind of.
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@Obsolesce said in City of Munich Moving to Closed Source Software:
It looks like the whole issue was due to their use of some weird distro years ago.
That article technically doesn't say why they need Windows now, so for all I know they have some new weird requirements I don't know about, but assuming they don't, I think the decision to go to Windows is a horrible idea. They'd be much better off going to Ubuntu instead.
Yes I upvoted a post about how Ubuntu would be better than an alternative. Please no heart attacks people.
