Barcelona goes Linux

While Munich spends €100M to migrate from Linux to Windows, cities like Barcelona are going in the other direction, as reported by FOSSBytes:

According to a report from Spanish newspaper El País (Via: It’s Foss), the City of Barcelona is moving away from the proprietary software products from Microsoft. This move is important in the wake of Munich’s recent decision to again adopt Microsoft’s products.

As per the report, Barcelona city plans to replace all user applications on its computers with open source alternatives. After finding a proper replacement for all proprietary software, the final step would be to go ahead with replacing the operating system with Linux.

To achieve this goal, the City’s administration has begun the process of commissioning IT projects and hiring developers on software programs. As per the plan, in 2018 about 70 percent of the City’s software budget will be spent on developing open source software. It’s being expected that the transition will be completed before Spring 2019.

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According to Francesca Bria, the City Council’s Commissioner of Technology and Digital Innovation, the taxpayer’s money should be invested in the open source code that could be reused by the public as well.

To start with the same, Exchange Server and Outlook will be replaced by Open-Xchange; Internet Explorer and Microsoft Office will be kicked out in favor of Mozilla Firefox and LibreOffice.

Spain is no stranger to this sort of FOSS-migration, , which may may be partly why Barcelona is willing to save money on Microsoft licensing fees, avoid MS's other anti-consumer bullshit, while also taking back control over their own computers and investing in a portfolio of free, open-source software that their taxpayers can then access at no added cost.

With Microsoft seemingly determined to continue pushing Windows-As-A-Service, at a pace of two major updates per year and a monthly update schedule on top of that which corporate IT departments are struggling to keep up with, we may start to see more of these Windows-to-Linux migrations over time, rather than fewer, especially in the taxpayer-funded sphere, where costs can't necessarily be easily recouped from customers, what with raising taxes being an unpopular sort of thing to do. Whether Microsoft's lobbyists salespeople can prevent that from happening, and you know they're working hard to do exactly that... well, I guess only time will tell.