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posted by martyb on Friday January 22 2016, @09:52AM   Printer-friendly
from the lock-in-is-expensive dept.

Munich still uses 41 proprietary apps that will only run under XP or 2000. The city has estimated it will cost $18M to replace them over a 4-year span.

Nick Heath at TechRepublic reports

Windows XP and 2000 are used by fewer than 1,500 of the more than 16,000 staff at the council, which relies on the aged Microsoft systems to run 41 applications.

[...] In order to stop using Windows XP and 2000, these 41 applications will either be migrated to a newer, supported operating system, replaced with more modern software, or phased out--as part of a four year project costing €16.6M ($18.03M).

[...] Munich carried on using XP and 2000 due to these 41 applications being used for crucial work in the city, from monitoring emissions for air pollution to flood protection.

To secure the OSes, Munich ran them on virtual machines and on standalone computers, as well as using what it calls "restrictive data interchange", quarantine systems, and additional protective measures.

The council has decided to stop using these older unsupported versions of Windows now as, not only are they a security risk, but according to a report [PDF, Deutsch] they have limited support for network and data security features the council wants to use.

[...] Often it can be the case that organisations can't update the application to run on a newer OS because the people with the necessary skills are gone or the company that originally wrote the software no longer exists.

[...] The project at Munich will be split into two phases: The first will assess the work needed and the second will carry it out. Work got underway at the end of [2015] and is expected to be complete by the end of September 2019.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2016, @10:56PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2016, @10:56PM (#293372)

    It amazes me that these decade-old apps apparently aren't WINE-compatible.
    They must use some really niche APIs.

    I used to have a bookmark for a page that used red and green cells to show WINE's API compatibilities.
    Can't find that now and my Google Fu is failing me.

    -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

  • (Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Saturday January 23 2016, @07:20AM

    by PinkyGigglebrain (4458) on Saturday January 23 2016, @07:20AM (#293528)

    Some of the apps might have some kind of hardware associated with them like dongles or I/O cards that WINE or Linux doesn't support or the software might be making some direct calls to the hardware or OS's I/O libraries that rely on the Windows XP driver model.

    It would be a big help to the WINE project if Munich could spend some of those millions improving WINE but it really depends on why the software is OS specific.

    --
    "Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 23 2016, @09:26AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 23 2016, @09:26AM (#293569)

      There are a number of insightful possibilities in your additional thoughts.
      Once Munich gets this sorted, I hope they put up a page with details of the 41 and the solutions found.

      Beige, up the (meta)thread, mentioned dongles.
      I know that there was (and, I suspect, still is) an industry to provide replacements for damaged dongles.
      As I am philosophically opposed to dongleware (having my tools unavailable while I get things unfucked never appealed to me), my only experiences with the paradigm are observations of the suffering of others.

      -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]