LiMux
LiMux is a project by the city council of Munich to migrate their software systems, including 14,000 personal computers and laptops of public employees, to free and open source software. Similar projects were started with differing success in Vienna (Wienux),[1] Solothurn,[2] Amsterdam (Open.Amsterdam),[3][4] and Zaragoza (AZLinux).
LiMux is also the name of the Linux distribution being used for the project. LiMux is the first Linux-based workplace certified for industry use (ISO 9241) by the TÜV IT, Technical Service, Germany.[5] It was based on Debian. Version 3 available from 2011 is based on Ubuntu 8.10 and version 4 will be based on Ubuntu 10.10.
Objectives
The migration project in Munich is ongoing and not an overnight switch to free software on every desktop. The main goal is to achieve more independence from software distributors, concerning client/server and native client software. The decision in 2003 had two components, on the one hand to get free software running on most of the desktops, and on the other hand to buy and develop web-based and platform independent (e.g. Java-based) business applications.
Timeline
- May 28, 2003 - The city council of Munich votes to go ahead with planning.[6] (From the press release: "Until spring 2004, a detailed concept of implementation and migration will be developed. Based on the results of this evaluation, the city council will decide how the migration to Linux will take place."[7])
- June 16, 2004 - The city council votes 50-29 in favor of migrating and to start an open competitive bidding within months[8][9]
- August 5, 2004 - The project is temporarily halted, due to legal uncertainties concerning software patents.[10][11]
- April 28, 2005 - Debian is selected as a platform.[12]
- September 6, 2005 - It is decided that the project needs an additional one year pilot test, and migration slips one year.[13]
- September 22, 2006 - The "soft" migration begins, one year behind original schedule.[14]
- November 2008: 1200 out of 14,000 have migrated to the LiMux environment (9%; March 2008: 1000=7%), in addition 12000 workstations use OpenOffice.org 2 installed on Windows (March 2008: 6000) and more 100% use Mozilla Firefox 1.5 and Mozilla Thunderbird 1.5 (March 2008: 90%). 18000 of 21000 macros, templates and forms are changed into Linux-enabled[15]
- 29 May 2008: The related WollMux-software, developed in-house to support personalised templates and forms in office textprocessing, is declared Open Source[16]
- 31 December 2009: The first step, the complete switch to OpenOffice.org enabling the Open Document Format as standard format is done[17]
- June 2010: "More than 3000" are LiMux-workplaces by now. Further 2000 shall migrate in 2010.[18]
- In February 2011 more than 5000 workplaces were based on LiMux.
- In June 2011 more than 6500 workplaces were based on LiMux.
- December 17, 2011: "9000" PC's are LiMux-workplaces now. With this they are 500 workplaces ahead of their goal for 2011.[19]
See also
References
External links