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The European Union's interoperability page reports:
The council of the Swiss capital of Bern on 12 November ordered the IT department to end its dependence on proprietary software. The council halved the city's request for a six-year [license] contract and insisted on an exit plan. A majority of [councilors] wants the city to replace proprietary software by open source solutions such as Linux and LibreOffice.
The exit plan should be based on pilot projects that consider alternatives, the city council decided. With 53 of the total 67 votes, the council changed the city's desktop software plans. The [councilors] want applications to become independent from PC operating system or office productivity tools. And in late 2018, when desktop operating and office [licenses] expire, Bern has to publish an open call for tender, using vendor-neutral specifications.
"Basically, from now on, the IT department may only procure and implement solutions that are platform-independent", the [councilors] agreed on Thursday.
[...] In a statement on 13 November, the Swiss Parliamentary Group on Digital Sustainability welcomed the change in IT strategy of the capital. The group offered to help the city with its exit plan, pointing to documentation such as a checklist to help public administrations to procure open source software solutions.
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Sunday November 15 2015, @10:29AM
"being platform independent means ..."
But what does it actually mean, is it actually defined anywhere?
Is it purely for the desktop (itself a dying platform, particularly when considering probably 5yr+ contracts starting 2018), or does it include laptops, net(chrome)books, tablets, mobile?
If just desktop, does it mean that applications should support several desktop platforms based on, say, market share, or does it mean supporting the particular desktop platform chosen (which is obviously not the same thing)?
If it means requiring win/mac/linux/bsd support, then how is linux support measured, any distribution, all distributions, a set of? What about gnome/kde, practically platforms in themselves, can you be independent if dependent on one of those, or on, say, systemd?
What about tablet/touch and mobile? Does platform independence mean must work using touch, without keyboard/mouse, for tablets and maybe phones, or touchscreen kisoks? If so is it restricted to desktop-OS tablets or is iOS/Android support (assuming win rt is dead) required? What about mobile, is iOS/Android/WinPhone required, Blackberry?
These sort of questions need to be asked and answered and considered carefully before the procurement, or they will end up with a mess of stuff that doesn't work or doesn't work together, or actually requires users to have multiple different platforms. Since FOSS seems to be a goal, a failure will reflect badly on FOSS even if the fault lies in the procurement process.
Also, and perhaps more fundamentally, the goal is unclear - is it platform-independence or no-proprietary-software? The former is (possibly only?) achievable by cloud/web-based solutions, which are as-of-now are proprietary. Maybe there will be FOSS office solutions across mac/win/lin/ios/droid/cloud by 2018, but I am pretty sure they don't exist yet.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by stormreaver on Sunday November 15 2015, @02:14PM
Is it purely for the desktop (itself a dying platform....
It's going to be a long time before the desktop dies (think 25-30 years at the very earliest). But yes, the article (yeah, I know) says this decision is for the desktop.
But once you have the desktop, when you already have the server, the rest falls into place naturally.
(Score: 2) by VortexCortex on Sunday November 15 2015, @10:35PM
It's going to be a long time before the desktop dies
Here I sit. My laser keyboard docking with my phone sitting atop my desk and it projecting a display upon the wall at my desk.
Mark my words: We shan't be rid of the "desk top" until we get rid of the desk.
(Score: 2) by http on Sunday November 15 2015, @07:27PM
It's defined by its opposite, platform dependence - as in, this only works if we use Microsoft's Active Directory. Platform dependance is different from platform training, as resources devoted to training in a particular system is not dependance, but a sunk cost.
I browse at -1 when I have mod points. It's unsettling.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Monday November 16 2015, @03:04AM
I'm going to go ahead and guess that they want to do what Munich did, and go Linux/Libreoffice, but they don't actually want to come out and say it just yet.