https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/community/osor/news/new-leadership-challenges-mun...
The newly elected mayor and deputy mayor of the German city of Munich are questioning the city's open source IT strategy, German IT news sites and daily newspapers are reporting.
First concrete doubts were expressed earlier this month by Munich's new mayor, Dieter Reiter (SPD), in an interview with 'Stadtbild' - the internal newsletter of the city administration. Referring to the mayor as a «fan» of the ubiquitous proprietary alternative, Stadtbild asked the mayor if the city will revert back. The mayor replied he was 'surprised' by the decision to move to open source. According to him, open source is running behind the proprietary IT vendor's solutions, adding that this is also a concern for the administration staff. «I want the best possible solutions for the city's workers, and I've already discussed this with those responsible for IT», he said.
The use of open source is also disputed by one of the new deputy mayors, Josef Schmid (CSU). On Tuesday, the German IT news site Heise quoted him as saying that the workstations running open source are missing numerous basic functionalities. The solutions are also incompatible with systems used outside the administration. He says it is unacceptable that it takes weeks to get his smart phone configured for use with the city's email. According to him, politicians, engineers and architects working for the city should be able to communicate with the rest of the world on a technically level playing field.
