Summary: Blowback for Microsoft and HP as claims fail to withstand scrutiny

Yesterday we published a summary of material about Microsoft FUD that it had hidden from the public. Well, rebuttals continue to come from Mr. Wildeboer, who points out flaws in the 'study', leading to yet more backlash from Munich. Microsoft's goes a long way back and Germany should know the dangers of propaganda. Here is a new article with refutations:

The German city of Munich refutes the claims over high costs of the city's switch to an IT system mostly based on open source. The IT department takes apart the numbers published by Focus earlier this week. The German weekly questions the city's move to open source, citing the author of an unpublished report commissioned by the maker of the ubiquitous proprietary office software and operating system. The response from the IT department was published in the city's newsletter on Tuesday. Karl-Heinz Schneider, head of the municipal IT service, starts by saying that the licensing costs that would be incurred for using their products had not been taken into account. Schneider: "By doing so, they fail to consider the lion's share of savings, of nearly seven million euro." The IT department also rejects the purported claim that it would not have needed to upgrade to newer versions of the proprietary operating system. Schneider: "A big trigger for our decision to put the operating system to the test, was the announcement by the vendor to drop support for the operating system in use at the time. Migrating to a new operating system was inevitable."

What's curious is HP's involvement in the propaganda. ⬆