The city of Münster has started a pilot using OpenOffice in schools. The city's IT department, Citeq, will also switch all of the 150 servers used in its primary and secondary schools over to GNU/Linux. Half of these have already been migrated to open source.
The changes in the school's IT systems are part of the overall IT strategy of the city's IT department.
At two schools teachers are trying out OpenOffice at the moment. The suite will be made available to all schools in November. "We plan to make OpenOffice the default office application for schools", says Citeq's spokesperson Stefan Schoenfelder.
The city earlier this month reported that 140 of its 360 servers are now running GNU/Linux. In a press statement published last week Wednesday, Citeq states that using open source is making it easier for the departments to share information.
The administration is also saving considerable costs, writes Citeq. "Open source tools such as Linux are mature, so we consider their use is very economical."
Münster is using a mix of Suse and Debian Gnu/Linux for its servers. These are used for instance as files servers, or for running the Typo3 open source content management system. They also use it for the proprietary Oracle database management system and the proprietary ERP system SAP, Schoenfelder says.
Desktop
There are no plans yet to run complete open source desktops in the city. Schoenfelder: "The staff are used to working with proprietary office applications, here as well as at home. Moreover, there are many applications available only on Microsoft desktops, and it would cost too much to move these to Linux."
The default web browser on many of the city administration's desktops is the open source tool Firefox.
The city of Münster started using open source in 1998. The first Linux server was a mail relay, running Sendmail. The decision to use open source was made by the IT department. Sometime later politicians wanted to increase the city's use of open source. "We now use Linux wherever it makes economic sense. We use it wherever possible and whenever the efforts for changing the operating system are not higher than the cost reduction that can be achieved."
More information:
Munster press statement (in German)