Is open source about to lose an important battle to Microsoft?

[sincity]

Will Munich give up? Ten years ago, the German city was acclaimed as a pioneer for moving from Microsoft's closed solutions to Linux and open source. But times have changed and now, the office of the mayor is considering moving back to Windows and Office.

Initially, more than 9,000 computers moved to LiMux (Linux in Munich) from Windows 4.0 and by 2013, nearly 15,000 seats were migrated to Linux and LibreOffice, something the city of Munich claimed saved millions of Euros

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As recently as late last year, the whole project was hailed as a major success with Kirsten Böge, Communications Manager for the LiMux project, even presenting near future goals in a document submitted to the European Union.

But eight months down the line, German newspaper Suddeutsche reports that the Mayor, Josef Schmid, is considering switching back to Windows citing a number of issues such as problems working with those outside the city that do not use open source software.

They also discovered that despite the generally accepted fact that Linux doesn't have license fees, there were maintenance fees and other development costs involved that ultimately made open source a more expensive option in the long run.