The city of Böblingen in the south of Germany next year will try out migrating to an open source desktop. It wants to have an alternative in place when its current proprietary licences run out around 2010.
Three of the city's about a dozen departments will be moving to a desktop based on the Ubuntu GNU/Linux distribution, according to David Gümbel, an open source IT consultant helping the city administration with the migration.
Gümbel talked about Böblingen's plans during a workshop for open source communities organised by the Open Source Software Observatory and Repository (osor.eu) on 14 November. The city's move to an open source desktop is tied to the end of support for its proprietary installation.
The city is currently using proprietary office applications running on an proprietary operating system. Support for the office applications by the provider is due to end around 2010. Gümbel said the city wants to have either upgraded to new proprietary office applications or have an open source alternative in place, based on OpenOffice, a suite of open source office applications.
Since in a few years time the support for the proprietary operating system will run out as wel, the city is also preparing for the upgrade to the next version of this operating system, or alternatively have the PCs running the Ubuntu GNU/Linux distribution.
The city will not be replacing hardware for the migration, Gümbel added, as the city leases its PCs and the computers are renewed at a regular basis independent from other IT products. The hardware currently in use is not sufficiently powerful to run the most recent proprietary operating system, Gümbel says.
The city has recently started using OpenOffice installed on all 450 PCs. It is not yet the default application to handle porprietary .doc or .xls files, Gümbel explained. "We will change that department by department, once the support training and supporting workshops have been held."
According to Gümbel the return on investment for the migration to OpenOffice is more attractive than the migration to an alternative operating system. "The interesting part of Böblingen's project is the replacing of proprietary office and web browser products by their open source equivalents."
Böblingen, just south of Stuttgart, has about 45,000 inhabitants. The city administration in total has 450 workstations.
More information:
Open source in Böblingen (pdf)