14 DAY TRIAL // While the City of Munich is switching back to Windows after running Linux on their public PCs, a move that will cost them over €100 million euros, the City of Barcelona is making the smart choice of dumping Microsoft's products and switch to Linux and Open Source.
First spotted by It's FOSS, this fantastic news was reported by Spanish newspaper El País, stating that the City of Barcelona is currently in talks of migrating all of their public computer systems to Open Source software products like LibreOffice and Open-Xchange, replacing Microsoft's expensive products.
The City of Barcelona is already running a pilot program with no less than 1,000 desktops powered by Canonical's very popular Ubuntu Linux operating system, but the paper said that they plan on replacing their Microsoft Exchange Server installations with Open-Xchange, and Microsoft Office suite with LibreOffice.
To achieve this goal, the City of Barcelona will start commissioning IT projects to local SMEs, which will be able to as well as to hire more than 60 developers to work on installing various other open-source software programs, backup and migrate existing data to the new systems running a Linux-based operating system, most probably Ubuntu.
Once the migration of the email clients and servers are done successfully, they'll develop a new online platform where SMEs (Small to Medium Enterprises) can participate in public bids. According to Francesca Bria, the Commissioner of Technology and Digital Innovation at the City Council, the migration will be performed before spring 2019.
The City of Barcelona invests in Open Source
Call it a new year's resolution, but the City of Barcelona decided to invest 70 percent of their software budget in Open Source software, which is the smartest move they could make, ever. Francesca Bria said that taxpayers' money should not be spent on expensive, licence-based software products, but invested in reusable systems that are open to the local ecosystem.
They also hope to expand this Windows to Linux migration to other municipalities in Spain, as well as to other cities in the world. Unfortunately, others don't think the same, and it's a shame, as City of Munich, which runs Linux and Open Source products on their public computers for more than a decade, decided to return to Microsoft's expensive products.