Thanks to open standards and Free software, Munich succeeds in its migration away from Microsoft. To Munich, it's not a case of Apple versus Microsoft versus Google. Munich's mayor has protested against OOXML and on they go with ODF. Check out this latest update from the ground:

ODF as standard, OpenOffice.org everywhere

LiMux has achieved one very important goal. The open standard Open Document Format (ODF) is now Munich’s primary used internal document exchange standard, beside of PDF for non-editable documents. Congratulations to all, who made this great success happen! Our standard office workplace consists now of OpenOffice.org (Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw), Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird and many other sometimes needed apps like e.g. GIMP.

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The whole project will be adapted during the next months for the final big step, the client migration in general. Some improvements and optimizations in the project structure, to learn from the past and be ready for continuing the success story.

There is an end-of-2009 article by Floschi that shows the migration has overcome all the obstacles and made good progress:

* 2500 GNU/Linux clients spread over all 12 departments * 20000 ODF templates produced and ODF is the standard format for documents * FLOSS apps everywhere in use daily

“It is not the same as "competition" but rather undermining the competition with back room deals.”"Wow. In their own words. MS is will try to engage the OSS community in order to destroy it," says one person. Another says that "corporations realize linux is past the tipping point. There are areas in which it is deployed that MS products aren't even considered, nor will they ever be. They won't "market" their way into those areas, ever." A more optimistic response says that "this must mean that GNU/Linux and OpenOffice.org are doing really well. I knew that all along…"

Microsoft is hiring people to subvert it from the inside, as usual.

Sun's Simon Phipps writes about Glyn Moody's analysis: "Fascinating insight gleaned from "Situations Vacant" shows just how much pain OpenOffice.org is really causing Microsoft, despite the effort their spokespeople make to dismiss it. The analysis is backed up by the statements they make about OpenOffice.org in their SEC filings."

Shamar says that it's "The perfect job for Miguel De Icaza," adding: "Orr, I forgot. De Icaza is already working for M$." Well, he joined Microsoft's CodePlex Foundation. ⬆