Munich – A city celebrated in the open source world as having thrown off the shackles of
Windows and embraced Linux as their main operating system in City Government offices as well
as Department for Education and Sport.
They even created a custom Linux distribution called LiMux, which is based on Ubuntu 12.04
and uses KDE 4 desktop. It comes with LibreOffice, Firefox, and Thunderbird preinstalled.
Munich is the only German city I have visited and that was only briefly on a business trip,
but I have good memories of an evening drinking in a BierGarten.
Recently the City Government commissioned an External IT Assessment, which was carried
out by Accenture.
The entire (LHM) Landeshauptstadt München report is 450 pages and I have had a read
through it.
Although…
Mein Deutsch ist nicht sehr gut.
So I had to use Google Translate.
You may well have heard from various news sites that Munich is considering ditching
Limux and going to Microsoft Windows 10.
But why would they?
Back handers from Microsoft?
That statement is purely my own opinion.
Reading through the LHM report does actually show some quite significant problems, that
weren’t necessarily the fault of Linux.
Here are the results of Interview statements carried out by Accenture:
The bulk of the dissatisfaction of IT users is caused by the problems of printing, the
Presentation and Editing of documents through unstable programs, cumbersome operation or
exchange with external parties.
The diverse client architecture and deployment, outdated operating systems, office and browser
versions as well as infrastructure are the causes.
With each new version of Limux errors which had been fixed would reappear again.
This was due to inadequate quality testing.
Basic corporate services such as printer management, encryption of USB Flash Drives, and exchange
of large files with internal and external parties were inadequate.
Now I can appreciate the difficulties with Printing in Linux, however that issue can
be mitigated by using a printer manufacturer who has provided proper drivers for Linux.
I notice the problem with general Office type applications is that it's unstable…
Rather than a complete and utter pain like Microsoft Office with the Ribbon bar.
Perhaps there are other factors, and indeed there are.
There were staff shortages within the IT department: By the end of 2015 almost a quarter of the
LHM's IT vacancies were unoccupied.
This corresponds to approximately 15% of the existing IT positions.
This was not solely due to the lengthy, public-law employment process, but also to deficits in
the process, which are however constantly optimized.
A frequently mentioned example is, in the case of some requesting units, the long lying
times of the so-called "cross-lists" (= professional statements).
Added to this is the fact that partial vacancies are not reported for occupation.
Presumably meaning part time or job sharing?
In addition, there was no long-term IT support in the personnel recruitment process (e-recruiting).
On top of that were issues with staff turnover and age of the equipment
Procedures that are operated on outdated infrastructure have led to an increase in longer downtime
with corresponding impacts on workability in the units.
In some cases there is a risk that procedures can not be restored
With the age of software and hardware procedures, the knowledge about operation, maintenance
and migration of processes is lost through personnel changes.
For obsolete technologies, hardware and software products, dependencies arise from individual
suppliers and service providers.
The budget must be used to address these risks and modernization.
Without a fully established Life Cycle management (regular updating of applications and infrastructure
elements), this situation will only improve slowly.
The infrastructure and architecture concepts developed in the decentralized world hinder
the pursuit of strategic objectives of the LHM (mobile access, optimization in application
development and Life Cycle management).
This is most evident in the diversity of the clients used and the problems the users have
faced.
However, it is also hampering major plans for the stabilization of operations, the modernization
of network infrastructure and the development of secure mobile access.
They are always encountering problems that lead to delays, additional tasks, and more
effort required.
So issues that are not dependant on a particular variety of operating system, but with IT staff
levels, age of equipment, and verity of hardware and software…
What sort of volumes of equipment are they talking about?
In terms of number of systems on the network: The LHM uses clients based on the operating
systems Linux (Basic client) and Microsoft Windows (Standard client).
Currently, LHM's IT is about 20,000 Linux basics (45% at current version 5.x, 32% version
4.1, 23% version 4.0) and 4,163 Windows clients (77% Windows 7, 9% Windows XP / Vista, 14%
Windows 2000) which are used when specific applications can not run under Linux.
Wait what Windows XP and 2000 are end of lifed.
Checking out Wikipedia for the version information: Version 5.0 of the LiMux Client was released
in November 2014 and is based on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS and uses KDE 4 Desktop.
The default office suite is LibreOffice 4.1 which comes with more than 300 patches most
of them also included in newer LibreOffice versions.
Firefox and Thunderbird are included and come with KDE integration patches.
The LiMux Client 4.1, from August 2012 is based on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and KDE desktop
3.5.
It includes OpenOffice.org, Firefox and Thunderbird.
The majority of IT users' dissatisfaction is caused by problems with printing as well
as presentation and editing of documents, unstable programs, cumbersome operation or
exchange with external parties.
In a survey carried out in 2015 which asked users about how satisfied they were with the
IT, 85% stated that they had to deal with software problems, 74% with printing problems
and 54% with hardware problems in their daily work.
I sometimes think that peoples perception of reality with computing is completely skewed.
I remember the results of one of the IT surveys from a company I used to work at, it had a
question about how satisfied were you with the bootup time?
This was around 2009 to 2010, so people were moving from XP/ Vista to Windows 7.
We were still on XP and dealing with a 15 minute bootup time and about another 5 minutes
from login to useable desktop.
Most people thought that was reasonably quick.
Trying to explain to people that 20 mins was an horrendously long bootup time and about
19 mins and 45 seconds longer than my computer at home took to boot.
Yet they couldn’t comprehend a computer was that fast.
Hell a 1980s DOS computer was a lot quicker than 20 mins, and when you were finished you
could just turn it off.
There was no need to shut down.
My point is perception and reality.
People are led to believe the utter garbage turned out by Microsoft is the norm and when
presented with something different the immediate reaction is to dismiss it, and even exaggerate
any minor faults.
Of course maybe I’m an intolerant Linux fanboy who wants to dismiss everything that
Microsoft does.
However, I think we are seeing attitudes slowly change towards Microsoft.
Competition from Android and Apple is eroding the dominance of Microsoft.
And the user interface changes with Windows 8 and spying tactics of Windows 10 show that
Microsoft can do wrong and annoy their users.
Perhaps if Munich were looking now to move from Windows 7 to Linux we might see a more
positive up take from their users.
One thing I didn’t see in the report was a suggestion to move towards an Apple solution.
Do Apple have a corporate solution?
Well I suppose the thing against is cost.
Think Microsoft licenses are expensive?
Well that pales into insignificance against the hardware costs of Macs and iPhones.
But they do mention moving to a Windows 10 solution and deprecating the hardware and
software after five years.
Strange that they keep the Linux hardware and Software going on for longer than five
years and then blame its failure as an excuse to move towards Windows 10.
Maybe the report had a predetermined bias?
When using open source software on the client, it has been shown that, contrary to the expectation
from 2006, Linux as the operating system has no relevant market share.
(Actually I showed it was at 3%, but yes still low)
OpenOffice or LibreOffice is usually only used by private individuals, universities,
schools or small and medium-sized enterprises.
Although both products are available on Linux, Windows and MacOS, the market share is low.
The situation with the Thunderbird email client is similar.
In contrast, Firefox has established itself as one of the leading browsers.
I think this open letter from KDE President Lydia Pintscher sums up the situation beautifully:
The City of Munich is of course free to decide on their IT infrastructure.
Nonetheless we believe the move away from Free Software would be a big mistake and feel
compelled to speak up.
Specifically the move away from Free Software will
not actually fix the issues identified in the report by Accenture
remove vendor-independence which was one of the core arguments for moving to Free Software
in the first place incur estimated costs of €90 Million to
be paid by tax-payer money.
Another €15 Million are expected to be spent on replacing or upgrading hardware that cannot
cope with the requirements of Windows 10 but runs fine with Linux.
The City of Munich has always been a poster child of Free Software in public administrations.
It is a showcase of what can be done with Free Software in this setting.
The step back by the City of Munich from Free Software would therefore not just be a blow
for this particular deployment but also have more far-reaching effects into other similar
deployments.
That said, we take this opportunity to invite all other administrations to leverage the
work done by the City of Munich over the last years and are willing to help resolve remaining
issues in the City of Munich related to our software.
In conclusion, varied aging hardware, improperly tested software, and staff shortages within
the IT team are the real issue.
It will never be solved by migrating to Windows
Linux is a free open source product and doesn’t care if you use it.
There should never be an argument of “why should you use Linux”.
We are free to choose whatever operating system we put on our computers.
If I was a tax payer living in Munich I would be angry if the city Government wasted millions
of Euros paying Microsoft licensing fees, when the faults lies elsewhere.