The fifteen universities in the German federal state North Rhine-Westphalia seem to have no actual plans to use GNU/Linux for desktops. Announcing a software licence deal in August with 33 universities, Suse Linux distributor Novell said some fifteen of these were going to use Linux on the desktop.
A company spokesperson stated at the time: "The biggest universities included in this contract that have Open Source desktop plans are Köln, Münster and Paderborn and the Fachhochschulen -- polytechnic universities -- in Bielefeld, Süd-Westphalen and Aachen."
Asked for details, Novell this month referred to Kurt Finkbeiner, the project manager at the Heinrich-Heine-University in Düsseldorf, that represents all 33 universities involved.
Finkbeiner: "The University of Düsseldorf has no concrete plans for Linux on the desktop. We're currently undertaking reviewing what plans the Fachhochschulen have, but this mainly concerns the use of Linux as a server. Based on this review we will decide which project to fund at what university. As far as I know, none of the Hochschulen has any plans yet to use Linux for desktops."
The company commented: "The information in the press release is correct, the universities have committed to deploy either Linux on servers or desktops or both but apparently have not finalised the details yet."
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