Floschi’s Blog

First: This column is my personal opinion and not necessarily the one of the Municipality of Munich.

OK, let’s start my FAQs with this simple question:

Why did the Municipality of Munich chose to use free software?

Short answer:

This was a political decision for independence, freedom of choice and a free market. The decision based on facts.

Long answer:

1. EOL for MS WinNT4

Microsoft company announced the end of life/support for Microsoft Windows NT4, which was widely used on the administration’s desktops. So the Municipality, like every other public authority, had to examine the next step.

2. Examining alternatives is a legal requirement

The City Council asked the administration the show alternatives. This was a demand of the german law. It’s unlawful to chose one solution or provider without examining alternatives. The administration decided to take this question serious and prepared a preliminary study together with an external consulting company.

This study examined three main factors of five different alternatives (ranging from proprietary software for operating system and office suite to free software for both, including some mixtures of both). The study answered the questions about

• Is it technical possible to use the alternative?
• How much does it cost to introduce the alternative?
• What are the strategic advantages and disadvantages of the alternative?

3. Let the politicians decide

Finally, the result was a draw of two examined alternatives. A draw in total, that means not in every detail aspect. The perfect situation to balance pros and cons, to discuss them and to focus on the things the coucil wants to stress. Great.

One of the two equal alternatives was based completely on proprietary software. This alternative had lower overall costs in the short term, but chosing this would have meant to tighten the dependencies on this proprietary software vendor. So the lower short term costs faced high long term costs. And from the strategic point of view, other products of the same vendor should have been introduced to ensure security and operation of the desktops.

The other equal alternative was based on free software. Of course, changing the architecture meant higher costs to invest in the beginning. But it was clear, that this was the only possible solution if we want to escape from the vendor lock-in.

The administration presented this draw to the members of the City Council in 2003.

4. Political decision for independence, freedom of choice and a free market

On May 26th in 2003, the City Council decided by majority of Social Democrats (SPD) and Greens for the long term strategy of the administration’s desktops. The main objectives to chose this alternative were

• Increase the independence from software and hardware vendors, consultants, external timelines
  This means to get the opportunity of choices.
• Reduce the hurdles for small and medium sized companies to take part in the software market
  More competition means higher quality for lower prices for all of us. Monopolies hamper this.
• Reduce the IT costs in the long term by deciding on our own.
  Of course an investment has to be made to get rid of the vendor lock-in, the so called exit costs (Gartner). But after the change, we all benefit from the opportunities of choices.

There were two decisions. The first one knows everyone:

• Free software and open standards for the desktop operating system and the office suite.

The second isn’t known as much as the first one, but also a very important one:

• Business (legacy) applications should be procured platform open in the future.

This long term goal means learning from the past and reducing the vendor lock-in again by applications which doesn’t take care of the operating system and office suite the user uses. Communicate with open standards and don’t force the user to a specific operating system or office suite.

5. Successful verification of the decision

The City Council decided and asked the administration to examine this alternative more in detail, before spending any money. This was the detailed conception phase in 2003 and 2004. Together with another IT and consulting company the administration re-examined the chosen free software way. And the result was quite the same. So the Council decided in 2004 to start the migration and authorized the money for the two times independently estimated costs.

My personal conclusion

This shows clearly that Munich’s decision is based on facts. Facts that have been revised by two independent consulting companies, by the administration, by the office for administrative audit, by the audit court of Bavaria.

So it’s not a kamikaze mission by some crazy free software enthusiasts, as blamed to me many times (e.g. by limuxwatch, imho the Microsoft paid anti lobbyist blog). But of course, it was a political decision which had to be made in 2003 and I admire the members of the 2003 City Council for this courageous decision against all lobbying attacks. It was the right decision during a time, when many other public administrations didn’t event think about alternatives, which was completely illegal, but common these old days.

I will continue this “LiMux question” column everytime when there’s some time left. Please feel free to send me your question.

Florian

Der Beitrag wurde am Sonntag, den 20. September 2009 um 12:54 Uhr veröffentlicht und wurde unter Freie Software, LiMux (en), LiMux questions, Politik abgelegt. du kannst die Kommentare zu diesen Eintrag durch den RSS 2.0 Feed verfolgen. du kannst einen Kommentar schreiben, oder einen Trackback auf deiner Seite einrichten.