thewayne: (Default)
[personal profile] thewayne
I think they have a good plan and have an excellent chance of success. Several years ago Munich tried to switch to Linux, and last year they switched back to Windows. They tried an everything in one shot approach, which I think is doomed from the get go. Barcelona is starting with replacing their Exchange servers with Open-XChange, Internet Explorer with Firefox, and Office with LibreOffice. Then they'll continue from there, eventually replacing the underlying Windows OS with Ubuntu after all of the apps are open source. I'm not sure when they'll be replacing their data center servers with Linux, it's not mentioned in the Europa.eu article.

Apparently this is part of a new European campaign called Public Money, Public Code, of which Barcelona is the first country to attempt such a conversion. It certainly won't be easy being the first, but they'll be able to provide LOTS of information to other municipalities who go down this path later.

https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/news/public-money-public-code

https://linux.slashdot.org/story/18/01/15/0415219/city-of-barcelona-dumps-windows-for-linux-and-open-source-software

https://publiccode.eu/

There's a good comment on the Slashdot story:

"Most IT shops do not know the answer to three questions
1) How much (all up, everything) do we pay microsoft in licence fees per year
2) How much do we pay other vendors for licence fees
3) Over 3 years how much have we paid for software- all up, including lawyers, audits, and licence management packages, and administrators who add nothing to the bottom line ensuring 'compliance'"


This can be a compelling reason to go open source like this.

Date: 2018-01-15 06:23 pm (UTC)
silveradept: A kodama with a trombone. The trombone is playing music, even though it is held in a rest position (Default)
From: [personal profile] silveradept
I hope they document it exceedingly well. And that it succeeds, so that there might be a blueprint that I can wave at the IT folk and the management to get them to seriously consider going open-source.

Date: 2018-01-16 07:57 pm (UTC)
silveradept: A kodama with a trombone. The trombone is playing music, even though it is held in a rest position (Default)
From: [personal profile] silveradept
They're still in the "getting to critical mass" phase, because there isn't really enough in the way of paying people what they're worth to have the IT departments or contracts to keep the ILS running smoothly.

Our biggest hurdle, honestly, would be proprietary DRM and Flash, neither of which work particularly well on Linux.

Date: 2018-01-15 06:39 pm (UTC)
devilc: Go Like Hell (Default)
From: [personal profile] devilc
I think ultimately that this is a wise choice, but the system has to be flexible enough to allow for Windows or OSX machines when there is no viable linux alternative.

EX, your video production and graphic design shops will need Windows or OSX because last I looked, the linux answers to Adobe Creative Suite/Avid are woefully lacking in things that pros need.

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