We are talking about the initiatives of Munich, Barcelona, ββand also CERN.
A photo - β unsplash
Munich again
In public institutions in Munich, the transition to open source over 15 years ago. It is believed that the impetus for this was the termination of support for one of the most popular . Back then, the city had two options: upgrade everything or migrate to Linux.
A group of activists convinced the mayor of the city, Christian Ude, that the second option 20 million euros and in terms of information security.
As a result, Munich began developing its own distribution kit - LiMux.
LiMux is a ready-to-use desktop environment with open source office software. The Open Document Format (ODF) has become the standard for office work in the city.
But the transition to open source did not go as smoothly as planned. By 2013, 80% of computers in administration work with LiMux. But in practice, government agencies used proprietary and open solutions at the same time - because of compatibility problems. Despite the difficulties, by this time on the open distribution more than 15 thousand workstations. 18 LibreOffice document templates were also created. The future of the project looked bright.
Everything changed in 2014. Christian Uhde did not participate in the elections for the post of mayor, and Dieter Reiter came to his place. In some German media "a fan of proprietary software." Not surprisingly, in 2017 the authorities from LiMux and completely return to the products of a well-known vendor. On the other hand, the cost of return migration in terms of three years 50 million euros. President, Free Software Foundation Europe that the decision of Munich will paralyze the city administration, and civil servants will suffer.
creeping coup
In 2020, with the change of political parties in power, the picture changed again. The Social Democrats and the Green Party have entered into a new agreement aimed at developing open source initiatives. Where possible, the city administration free software.
All custom software developed for the city will also be transferred to open source. Representatives of the Free Software Foundation Europe have been promoting this approach since 2017. Then they campaign "Public Money, Public Code" (Public Money, Public Code). Its goal is to ensure that software developed with taxpayer funds is released under open source licenses.
The Social Democrats and the Green Party will be in power until 2026. It can be expected that up to this point in Munich they will definitely follow the course of open projects.
And not only there
Munich is not the only city in Europe migrating to open source. Up to 70% of Barcelona's IT budget to support local developers and the development of open source projects. Many of them are being implemented not only throughout Spain, but throughout the world - for example, the platform for the analysis of data from meters and weather sensors are used in the city of Tarras, as well as Dubai and Japan.
A photo - β unsplash
In 2019 on open source at CERN. Representatives of the laboratory say that the new project will reduce dependence on third-party vendors and give more control over the data being processed. The organization is already implementing open mail services and VoIP communication systems.
Switch to free software and in the European Parliament. From May of this year, IT solutions developed for government organizations must be open source and released under open source licenses (if possible). According to representatives of the parliament, this approach will increase information security and make data processing more transparent.
Overall topic and import substitution of office suites is of interest on HabrΓ©, so we will continue to monitor developments.
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Source: habr.com