[clug] German City Council deployed Linux OS across their departments

Fri Jun 12 07:22:41 MDT 2015

People carry on about microsoft as the devil incnarnate, which they
aren't, but they do like to spread a bit of FUD now and again. Every
time they do (or someone does it on their behalf - with or without
their instruction or consent), we should just fondly remember the
wonderful "Get the facts" campaign, where Microsoft and Accenture made
the the London Stock Exchange the centre of their whole marketing on
why Linux isn't good enough and both companies backed the London Stock
Exchange development using windows and dot net to the absolute hilt
based on that very expensive marketing campaign that so it could not
afford to fail.

Then this:

http://www.computerworld.com/article/2467082/data-center/london-stock-exchange-to-abandon-failed-windows-platform.html

and getthefacts.com redirects to some generic microsoft page like it
never happened
They must have had an idea of the issues, the wayback machine hasn't
got it cached due to microsoft's robots.txt (I'm assuming in force at
the time?)

Anyone buying into that FUD will probably get a giggle out of if and
change their mind - we all get taken in by marketing. I'm not immune,
neither are you. "Linux isn't industrial strength" isn't really an
argument I've had for many years. Who are the most successful tech
companies? Google? Apple? Facebook? Twitter? Amazon? Uber? ... make up
a list. They all could not exist without Free software, most could not
exist without the Linux kernel. Proprietary software has its place if
one is being purely pragmatic (there is more to life but sometimes
that's what people want) but core infrastructure and platforms we're
not really even considering proprietary OS, webservers and so on past
the initial stage of assessment at all anymore are we? People have
been burned too badly too often and seen the spectacular successes
elsewhere.

People using Linux as "users" can hate it, as they do Windows, as they
do OSX as they do their iphone, ipad and android gear. Usually what
they really hate is badly done bespoke software they have to use for
their job that someone blames on the OS rather than it just being
badly done for one of any number of reasons - frequently *not* the
developers incompetence or laziness.

So maybe we're at the point where the success of using user facing
Free software, Linux and so on or choosing not to do so in business &
the public service is more dependent on how well the implementation
team as a whole perform together to deliver what's required than the
choice of Linux, desktop, windows, osx, android or whatever. Which is
probably how it *should* be. Perhaps also this truth is becomming more
widely accepted. If you have a really good team who know X, use X the
license fees are unlikely to be significant. If you've got a team not
performing as well - neither X, Y nor Z will save you from that. Count
Free with a capital F as a pro when weighing up the options with the
appropriate weighting.

One question I'd like to hear opinions about is Oracle vs Postgres as
a relational database. Excluding application specific extensions (eg
for accounting or whatever that you might buy from oracle in addition
to their rdbms) how do they compare at scale as pure relational
database software? Are their good pragmatic reasons to use Oracle
still?

On 12 June 2015 at 08:39, George at Clug <Clug at goproject.info> wrote:
>     Hi,
>
> Some time ago a Microsoft news item reported; "German government has
> decided to switch back to Windows after 10 years."
> http://microsoft-news.com/german-government-switching-back-to-windows-os-from-linux-after-10-years/
>
> I am a bit confused here as I use the words "government" and "City
> Council" to mean different governing bodies.  But besides this, it
> seems many other web news sites picked up on this and reported the
> imminent  end of Linux use  and the move back to Windows by the
> German City Council, however I don't believe that this ever happened.
>
> What is troubling me is that doing a Google search, I am unable to
> find any reports about the conclusions of the reported "2014 audit"
> being performed by the Munich City Council.
>
> Nor can I find any 2015 news reports on their continued use of Linux
> or any move back to Windows. All the items I get in my searches are
> dated 2014 and older.  Surely someone, somewhere has made comments in
> the last six months?
>
> If you can find any updates on what OS Munich is using, on what was
> the result of the 2014 audit, if it really happened, or what Munich
> City Council's current IT strategy is, please post those links here
> for me.
>
> The best information that I could find was dated October 2014. But why
> no updates these last six months?  Even when I search on 2015, Kolab
> and Munich I get no 2015 pages returned?
>
> http://www.bristolwireless.net/blog/2014/10/16/munich-sticks-with-limux-and-free-software/
>
>
>  MUNICH STICKS WITH LIMUX AND FREE SOFTWARE
>
>   Steve Woods [1]  International IT News [2], Open Source News [3]
> October 16, 2014 [4]  1 Comment » [5]
>
>
> Limux iconOn Tuesday, Munich’s first mayor finally responded to an
> inquiry by the Green Party [6] (PDF, German) about rumours regarding a
> possible reversion to a Windows-based desktop environment from its
> current Linux-based LiMux [7] system (_news passim [8]_). The response
> shows that there is no factual basis for the claims made by first
> mayor and second mayor. An evaluation of the IT infrastructure and
> processes is in progress.
>
>
>
> In recent months, statements by the newly appointed mayors Reiter and
> Schmid (_Munich has 3 mayors. Ed._) have stirred up confusion about
> the future IT strategy of Munich. Contrary to third mayor Christine
> Strobl, the first and second mayors have hinted in recent months a
> possible end to the use of free software within the city. However,
> facts were hard to obtain. The answer to the inquiry has now shed some
> light on the matter.
>
>
>
> NO FACTUAL BASIS FOR CRITICISM
>
>
>
> The mayor now admits that the often-cited waiting time needed to
> obtain official work mobile phone is unrelated to the LiMux operating
> system, but was instead caused by the fact that he was the first to
> demand the implementation of Apple’s iOS [9] in the city’s IT
> infrastructure.
>
>
>
> As regards the missing unified mail and calendar application
> criticised by Schmid, it became clear that the relevant Kolab [10]
> free software solution is currently being implemented. This only
> started in early 2014 and is expected to be in use early in 2015.
>
>
>
>
> Links:
> ------
> [1] http://www.bristolwireless.net/
> [2]
> http://www.bristolwireless.net/blog/category/international-it-news/
> [3] http://www.bristolwireless.net/blog/category/open-source-news/
> [4]
> http://www.bristolwireless.net/blog/2014/10/16/munich-sticks-with-limux-and-free-software/
> [5]
> http://www.bristolwireless.net/blog/2014/10/16/munich-sticks-with-limux-and-free-software/#comments
> [6] http://www.ris-muenchen.de/RII2/RII/DOK/ANTRAG/3456728.pdf
> [7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LiMux
> [8]
> http://www.bristolwireless.net/blog/2013/02/14/munich-responds-to-fud-report-on-limux/
> [9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS
> [10] http://kolab.org/
>
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