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Vienna hobbles open-source migration

Matthew Broersma ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 06 Jun 2008 11:37 BST

In a setback for the City of Vienna's three-year-old open-source migration programme, city authorities decided on Wednesday to scrap most of the systems that have so far adopted the city's custom-built Linux distribution, instead approving an €8m migration to Windows Vista.

The Vienna district council on Wednesday formally approved a budget of €8m (£6.3m) for migrating Windows 2000 systems to Vista and Office 2007, according to a report from Österreichischer Rundfunk (ORF), the Austrian national public service broadcaster.

The Vista migration will include 720 kindergarten systems that had been migrated to Wienux, a Debian-based Linux distribution developed internally by the city's IT body.

"This is a major setback to the city's Linux migration," said Marie Ringler, a member of the district council and representative of the Vienna Green Party, according to the report.

A key factor in the rollback decision is software used in a kindergarten language-learning programme called 'Schlaumäuse', which requires Internet Explorer, according to city officials quoted in the report.

The Schlaumäuse programme, launched in December 2007, aims to improve language skills for children of immigrant backgrounds, and has Microsoft as its principal backer, according to the Austrian Federal Chamber of Commerce (WKO).

The Schlaumäuse software requires several IE plug-ins and caused frequent crashes in Wine, the Linux software used to run Windows applications on Linux, said Erwin Gillich, the head of IT at Vienna's municipal authority, according to the ORF's report.

The software maker behind the Schlaumäuse software is planning a Firefox version for 2009, according to Ringler, who pointed out in the report that the city could have subsidised a Firefox version of the software for a fraction of the cost of the Windows Vista migration.

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The city has not offered enough incentives for migration to Linux and the open-source productivity application OpenOffice.org, which is carried out on a voluntary basis, according to Ringler.

The city's IT department reportedly said there had also been hardware detection problems under Linux.

Vienna's IT body, MA 14, is reportedly planning the Vista migration to be completed next year.

The Socialist Party, Austrian People's Party and the Freedom Party voted in favour of the Vista migration, while the Greens opposed the move, according to the ORF.

Despite the setback, city officials remained positive about the Wienux programme.

The city body responsible for kindergartens, the MA 10, said the schools will continue to use Wienux under a dual-boot system, and MA 10 department head Christine Spiess told the ORF that the body had generally had a positive experience with Linux.

The city will continue to develop Wienux and offer it to city council users on a voluntary basis, Gillich told the ORF.

In 2005 Gillich described the project as a "soft migration" where users have the option of switching from Microsoft Office 2000 to the open-source productivity application OpenOffice.org, and from Microsoft.

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Its the applications and device drivers that run on windows that cement its dominance. How many people would fork out hundreds of pounds for Vista if Linux ran all the software and kit they wanted to use.