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Comment by em3rgent0rdr | Hacker News Reader

Munich did that, but they didn't do the second part of parent's suggestion: "and they invested it in an open source office suite..."

Surely most of the problems with the opensource tools they were using could have been resolved by helping the opensource projects fix bugs.

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> Surely most of the problems with the opensource tools they were using could have been resolved by helping the opensource projects fix bugs.

Actually LiMux did that. From an external PoV, I saw quite a number of commits coming from LiMux sponsored people in a few FOSS projects I follow.

For so.e of the problems that is the case. Some of fheproblems were that no other municipality joined them in the effort, which leaves them a sole fighter in a world where they have to use software provided by other authorities. One example is ordering a passport was initially setup by running the software provided by the federal administration via terminal server, however the. Finger prints were added to passports so the setup didn't work anymore and even being "the largest municipality in Germany" (cities of Berlin and Hamburg are larger, but they delegated more municipality tasks to the districts and are also states) doesn't give them much leverage.

They way the decision came into play is crazy however. Just around the elections Microsoft moved their German headquarters from outside the city into the city and the next elected deputy mayor from the conservative party was disappointed that it took much time to get an official mobile phone from the IT department and setting up mail on that device was complicated ... not idea how that's related to desktops, but that triggered the debate ...

Yup. Going open source requires a shift in mindset when handling support issues. Coming from a paralyzed, complaining-to-vendor position, into taking responsibility and fixing the problems yourself.

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