[DMCA-Activists] EWeek: Why Munich Went GNU/Linux

[Seth Johnson]

> http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,1110809,00.asp


Why Munich Dumped Microsoft for Linux

By  Peter Galli 
May 28, 2003


Microsoft on Wednesday lost its bid to keep the German city of Munich a
Windows customer.

The Munich City Council on Wednesday announced that it has decided to deploy
the Linux open-source operating system and will migrate its 14,000 desktop
and notebook computers away from Windows products to Linux. 

Richard Seibt, the CEO of SuSE Linux A.G. in Nuremberg, Germany, told eWEEK
in an interview on Wednesday that the Munich City Council would be moving
away from all Microsoft products and implementing Linux as its strategic
infrastructure platform. 

The city currently runs Microsoft Office, Windows 3.1, 95, 98 and NT as well
as the Internet Explorer browser. The council also plans to move to the free
OpenOffice desktop productivity suite and may also decide to use Sun's
StarOffice suite, he said. 

Although the council has not as yet made a decision on its choice of vendor,
SuSE Linux AG and IBM Germany will participate in the resulting contract
bid. 

"The city of Munich believes that from a long-term perspective they are by
far better positioned if they use Linux and open-source software. This is a
momentous decision because we believe this truly marks a watershed moment
for Linux. 

"The city clearly sees Linux not just as cost savings over costly,
proprietary software, but also as the best tool for the job—bringing
security, stability, flexibility and privacy not available to them before,"
Seibt said. 

The move away from proprietary Microsoft software is not just a German
phenomenon but a European story, he said. This has nothing to do with the
fact that Linux was born in Europe but rather that it is more competitive in
lowering the total cost of ownership and allowing customers to chose from a
range of products from different vendors, he said. 

"I have talked to the German government many times, and they understand that
Linux and the application development associated with it, helps create jobs
in Germany. We are talking about investment as well as customer savings,"
Seibt said. 

Walter Raizner, the country general manager for IBM Germany, said that the
German public sector is embracing open standards-based software such as
Linux. "Worldwide, more than 75 IBM government customers—including agencies
in France, Spain, UK, Australia, Mexico, the United States and Japan—have
now embraced open computing and Linux to save costs, consolidate workloads,
increase efficiency and enact e-government transformation. 

"With Munich's decision, one thing is clear—it's open season for open
computing. Linux represents freedom and flexibility. This is essential in
e-government—they need more flexibility to serve their constituencies better
and faster, and freedom of choice to do it at less cost to the public.
Munich is leading the way," he said. 

Hans-Juergen Croissant, a spokesman for Microsoft in Germany, said on
Wednesday that "with respect to the Munich administration, we will continue
to work closely with them to explore additional programs and offerings that
best meet the needs of Munich's citizens and businesses." 

Microsoft is always willing to discuss with governments or organizations how
it can help bring the value of Microsoft products and services to the
benefit of government agencies, consumers and businesses alike, he said. 

In a counter-move, Microsoft on Wednesday also announced that the town of
Frankfurt am Main and Microsoft Deutschland GmbH have signed a basic
agreement for long-term cooperation in the IT field. 

Under the agreement, Microsoft grants local municipalities inexpensive and
flexible terms for purchasing and using Microsoft products. "The advantages
for Frankfurt are, in particular, the reduction of expenditure and costs for
software license management. 

"The agreement also secures guaranteed prices for the contract duration,
fixed annual installments as well as a set price per PC for the town over
several years—a move which simplifies budget planning," the company said in
a statement. 

Weighing in on the controversy surrounding the SCO Group's campaign to
protect its Unix intellectual property and to sue IBM for $1 billion, SuSE's
Seibt pointed to a recent research poll in Germany that showed that 88
percent of the respondents had no issue moving forward with Linux and did
not believe that SCO could win its lawsuit against IBM. "They simply don't
care," he said. 

Seibt also welcomed the contents of a letter from Jack Messman, the CEO of
Novell, Inc. to SCO CEO Darl McBride, in which Messman publicly challenged
SCO's assertion that it owns the copyrights and patents to Unix System V.
Novell itself once owned the rights to Unix. 

"This is a very important development as I think we will see very soon who
is right and who is wrong. They are talking about a public contract document
between the two parties. I have seen the contract, and it contains specific
asset exclusions," he said. 

SCO's McBride told the media and analysts in a telephone conference call on
Wednesday that many corporations across the world are taking a "timeout and
want greater clarity about the legal situation before doing big Linux
implementations." 

But SuSE's Seibt disputed that, saying he is seeing "absolutely no" slowdown
in its corporate Linux business and that its customers are moving ahead with
their plans. While customers are asking SuSE for assurances that its code is
not affected by any intellectual property or code owned by anyone else, the
company believes its Linux distributions does not violate anyone else's IP
rights, he said. 

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