Just days after posting about Linux's user market share increasing 233% in two months, I came across these two ZDnet stories, linked in a single post on Slashdot. In chronological order by publication:
1. Why Munich is shifting back from Microsoft to open source – again:
In a notable U-turn for the city, newly elected politicians in Munich have decided that its administration needs to use open-source software, instead of proprietary products like Microsoft Office.
"Where it is technologically and financially possible, the city will put emphasis on open standards and free open-source licensed software," a new coalition agreement negotiated between the recently elected Green party and the Social Democrats says.
The agreement was finalized Sunday and the parties will be in power until 2026. "We will adhere to the principle of 'public money, public code'. That means that as long as there is no confidential or personal data involved, the source code of the city's software will also be made public," the agreement states.
That story was quickly followed by:
2. Why Hamburg is now following Munich's lead:
The trend towards open-source software on government computers is gathering pace in Germany.
In the latest development, during coalition negotiations in the city-state of Hamburg, politicians have declared they are ready to start moving its civil service software away from Microsoft and towards open-source alternatives.
The declaration comes as part of a 200-page coalition agreement between the Social Democratic and Green parties, which will define how Hamburg is run for the next five years.
[...]
"With this decision, Hamburg joins a growing number of German states and municipalities that have already embarked on this path," said Peter Ganten, chairman of the Open Source Business Alliance, or OSBA, based in Stuttgart.
He's referring to similar decisions made in Schleswig-Holstein, Thuringia, Bremen, Dortmund, and Munich. But, he adds: "The Hamburg decision is nevertheless remarkable because the city has always been more aggressively oriented towards Microsoft."
Munich's decision to abandon open-sourced software solutions that they'd spent €100M in public funds to develop, was touted at the time by the anti-Linux crowd as evidence of Windows 10's clear dominance and superiority in the space. It defied all available evidence, as well as what was (at the time, anyway) a growing wave of Linux adoption by state organizations the world over, and may have derailed that adoption for years.
It now seems that either the fundamental reasoning behind open-source adoption for state organizations was simply too strong, or the costs of using Windows 10 were simply too high, to derail the open-source movement entirely. The fact that the entire computing world runs on Linux, with desktop PCs really being the only major exception, may be playing a role here, too; and if the Linux Shift among PC users continues at its current pace, even that bastion of Microsoft monopoly may be living on borrowed time.
I'll admit it; I'd largely given up hope of this happening, especially after watching major open-source success stories like Munich abandon open-source for the security blanket of Microsoft's familiar brand. To see Munich's 180 turn into a 360, followed by Hamburg following them in an open-source direction, gives me hope once again, though.
I do wish that politics weren't playing such a large role; both Munich and Hamburg are now governed by coalitions of the same two political parties, which means that any reversal of political fortunes there could also reverse the progress being made. Still, the fact that this will be their position for at least five years should mean that the progress becomes harder to reverse, thanks to the sunk-cost phenomenon. And, if open-source can stick in Germany, then it has a chance to spread throughout the EU, thanks to Germany's strong position and influence in the EU organization.
I'm going to want to see more data points before declaring the Linux Shift to be a real, sustainable thing, but it's looking more promising now than it has for years. Interesting times, indeed...