City of Turku in Finland started Linux and OpenOffice.org migration plans a couple of years ago. They conducted two pilot tests with a couple of dozens computers. In 2003, the City decided to migrate fully to OOo, and partially to Linux.
This week, the City Council decided to abandon the migration plans and chose MS Windows and MS Office for the entire city for the next three years. About 5340 MSO licenses will cost the City about 1.46M euros. Strangely, the newspaper article about the decision wrote "Linux-based OpenOffice", indicating that OpenOffice doesn't work in Windows. Well, this was propably an error of the reporter, as I know that the people at the City know the facts better. This I don't know much about what happened in the city, as I've only heard rumours that tell that MS had about three marketing personnel working on the City. Apparently, MS used divide and conquer strategy very efficiently. The marketing people were in contact with the management of various divisions directly, without the knowledge of the City's IT Department, which was recommending and working on the Linux/OOo migration. With this strategy, MS managed to create great split between the IT department and some divisions such as health care and schools. Eventually, the schools and health care divisions went forward on their own and bought full MS solutions. The split became so big that people working at the IT department became afraid of their jobs. Also in summer 2003, Charles Simonyi visited Turku with his huge luxury boat and some city personnel were invited in. And, I repeat, these are just rumours. I don't know the facts. This is just to give a warning that MS marketing may be clever and ruthless. The newspaper article mentions some interesting things about Microsoft (rough translation): "The connections between Turku and Microsoft were realized at personal level when the Max Mickelsson, assistant of Ilkka Kanerva (city representative and member of Finnish parliament, ex-minister in liberal conservative National Coalition Party), was appointed in March as the manager of government relations in Finland and Baltic. The previous holder of the post at Microsoft, Mikael Jungner (Social Democrats), became CEO of Yle (Finland's national public service broadcasting company)." Unfortunately, I don't have time to translate all of these right now. Anyhow, here are the links if they are of any use to you. The decision by the City Council: http://www05.turku.fi/ah/kh/2005/1107030l/1255829.htm An article in Turun Sanomat 5. Nov 2005: http://www.turunsanomat.fi/verkkolehti/?ts=1,4:2:0:0,4:2:1:1:2005-11-05,4:337997,1:0:0:0:0: In the good news, Finnish Department of Justice will probably choose OOo for 8500 of their 10000 computers. They published a VERY GOOD interesting report this spring comparing OOo, MSO and Lotus. The report predicts major savings: about 4M¤ for 85% OOo + 15% MSO versus the 10M¤ for 100% pure MSO solution. Unfortunately, the report is only in Finnish, but's there's a good list of references in the end. The references provide a rather good overview of OOo in public administration in Europe. http://www.om.fi/uploads/zw09u6kk6h4d3gv.pdf --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
