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Nick Heath reports
[Munich's city] council is intending to conduct a study to see which operating systems and software packages--both proprietary and open source--best fit its needs. The audit would also take into account the work already carried out to move the council to free software.
Now, in a response to Munich's Green Party (PDF), Mayor Dieter Reiter has revealed the cost of returning to Windows.
Reiter said that moving to Windows 7 would require the council to replace all the PCs for its 14,000-plus staff, a move he said would cost €3.15 million. That figure did not include software licensing and infrastructure costs, which Reiter said could not be calculated without further planning. He said a move to Windows 8 would be far more costly.
Reiter said going back to Microsoft would mean writing off about €14M of work it had carried out to shift to Limux, OpenOffice, and other free software. Work on project implementation, support, training, modifying systems, licensing of Limux-specific software, on setting up Limux and migrating from Microsoft Office would have to be shelved, he said.
He also revealed that the move to Limux had saved the council about €11M in licensing and hardware costs, as the Ubuntu-based Limux operating system was less demanding than if it had upgraded to a newer version of Windows.
Related: No, Munich Isn't About To Ditch Free Software and Move Back to Windows
(Score: 3, Insightful) by choose another one on Friday October 17 2014, @08:58AM
I can't see why Windows 8 should be more costly than 7 if buying new machines - operating system cost with a new machine is about the same, if anything buying "downgrades" to 7 (if available) is more expensive. Same will apply with bulk OS licensing from MS - in fact you would always licence latest OS but with downgrade rights, so no cost difference.
If buying second hand machines that may not run 8, then maybe there is an argument, but new hardware bought _now_ will run 8 and has drivers for it, and in fact may not run 7 (or may not be supported with 7). As time goes on, the Windows 7 option becomes more difficult restrictive (limited hardware) and hence more costly, surely ?
(Score: 3, Funny) by jbWolf on Friday October 17 2014, @10:39AM
Bigger buttons means a bigger monitor is needed. Duh! :P
www.jb-wolf.com [jb-wolf.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 17 2014, @12:31PM
You think they would buy their computers from the next consumer market? I'm not even sure those OEM licenses used on consumer PCs would cover the use of the software in the administration.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Friday October 17 2014, @12:57PM
I would guess that it's because they do site/enterprise licensing rather than machine by machine, although I've seen places that actually end up paying for both.
(Score: 2) by choose another one on Friday October 17 2014, @01:07PM
As long as the OEM licence is Pro version (if you want to connect it to a domain) there is no problem, and for enterprise licencing, like I said, with MS you almost always have to licence the latest version with downgrade rights, in other words you have to licence 8+ anyway, but you will have the right to downgrade to 7.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Translation Error on Friday October 17 2014, @01:54PM