document/TranslateProject
2
0
Fork 0
mirror of https://github.com/LCTT/TranslateProject.git synced 2025-02-25 00:50:15 +08:00
Code Issues Packages Projects Releases Wiki Activity

Merge pull request #864 from blueabysm/Translated-Moving-a-city-to-Linux-requires-political-backing-says-Munich-project-leader

Browse Source 
[translated] moving a city to linux requires political backing says munich project leader
This commit is contained in:
Vito 2014-04-07 10:38:33 +08:00
commit 94d693d4c1
2 changed files with 65 additions and 66 deletions
Show Stats Download Patch File Download Diff File Expand all files Collapse all files

66
sources/Moving a city to Linux requires political backing, says Munich project leader.md
View File

@ -1,66 +0,0 @@
[translating] blueabysm
Moving a city to Linux requires political backing, says Munich project leader
================================================================================
> Munich city authority has migrated almost 15,000 PCs from Windows NT to its own Linux distribution
IDG News Service - This year saw the completion of the city of Munich's switch to Linux, a move that began about ten years ago. "One of the biggest lessons learned was that you can't do such a project without continued political backing," said Peter Hofmann, the leader of the LiMux project, summing up the experience.
The Munich city authority migrated around 14,800 of the 15,000 or so PCs on its network to LiMux, its own Linux distribution based on Ubuntu, exceeding its initial goal of migrating 12,000 desktops.
Munich decided to migrate its IT systems when Microsoft said it planned to discontinue support for the operating system the city then relied on, Windows NT 4.0. The city was forced to choose between moving to a newer version of Windows, or finding an alternative platform, as new software and new versions of existing software would not be available on Windows NT. The city council decided to go with Linux to become more independent from software vendors.
Continued political backing was key to the success of the migration, said Hofmann.
"We had it from the start and it never failed. We had to treat our politicians as stakeholders and keep them informed," he said.
By doing this, the politicians never lost interest and always knew what the people involved in the project were doing, he said. "I saw a lot of other open source projects going down the sink," because they didn't have that backing, or lost it, he said.
It took the city about 10 years from the first decision to switch through to completion of the LiMux project, which was originally scheduled for completion in 2009. However, there were several delays along the way.
First, the migration started a year later than originally planned, said Hofmann. The second delay was caused in 2007 when the city council decided that Munich's IT department should also be responsible for the standardization of the infrastructure that is necessary for Linux clients, he said. Munich however didn't have the right processes nor the right organization for that kind of standardization, he said.
The project was delayed for a third time in 2010, when the city council decided to enlarge the project, said Hofmann. Goals were added to develop three additional processes within the project: risk management, test management and requirement engineering.
Despite the difficulties, Hofmann said he would do it again tomorrow.
The heterogenous infrastructure of Munich's IT organization was one of the projects biggest problems, Hofmann said. When the project started there were 22 organizations that each had their own individual configuration, software, hardware, processes and knowledge for their Windows clients and the accompanying infrastructure they were using, he said. "We wanted to have a standardized, centrally delivered and developed Linux client," he said.
While Hofmann expected the splintered infrastructure to cause problems, standardizing the clients proved harder than he expected, for both technical and organizational reasons.
Luckily, he had the freedom to rebuild the whole of the city's IT infrastructure.
"Anyone planning to switch needs to be prepared to rethink their entire IT organization. Switching to Linux is more than saving costs and using free software," he added.
Munich's switch did save money though. In November 2012, responding to a question from a council member, the city calculated that migrating to LiMux instead of modernizing its existing Microsoft software [would save it over a!11 million][1].
That calculation compared the LiMux option with a switch to either Windows 7 and Microsoft Office or Windows 7 and OpenOffice, the productivity suite Munich chose for LiMux. It included necessary hardware upgrades, training, external migration support and optimization processes, among other things. Both Windows options were significantly more expensive than LiMux, mainly due to Microsoft's software licensing fees.
One expense Hofmann said he doesn't have with LiMux is support contracts. "What do you need a support contract for? You really get no support, you get new versions. The only reason you need it is because your lawyers tell you so they can have someone to blame if it is failing. We no longer blame anyone, we try to fix it," he said.
If Munich's IT staff can't fix a bug themselves, they will find a specialist to solve the specific bug, Hofmann said. "You no longer rely on some vendor or some service that you buy. You rely on yourself and what you know," he said.
There are still complaints though. Word and Excel documents received from external organizations sometimes have to be modified and sent back, which can lead to difficulties with interoperability, he said. The city is trying to convince its correspondents to use ODF, the file format of OpenOffice, or PDF for documents that don't need to be changed, Hofmann said, adding that the city has helped finance development of interoperability tools.
As part of its switch to OpenOffice, however, the city implemented WollMux, an office extension for templates and forms, that was published as free software 2008 and is now used by a handful of other organizations, he said.
There were other obstacles to the elimination of Microsoft Office -- including the city's reliance on over a thousand Microsoft Office and Visual Basic macros in its in-house applications, Hofmann said.
Now there are around 100 such macros still in use on the few remaining Windows PCs.
"It never was our goal to eliminate Windows as a whole," he said, although the city has gone well beyond its initial target of migrating 80 percent of its PCs.
The financial department, for instance, still has three Windows PCs running special banking software. To switch that department to LiMux the city would have had to pay the software vendor to develop a Linux version of its application for the three PCs, Hofmann said.
The city faced a similar problem in its dealings with the Bundesdruckerei, the German authority that prints passports. It mandates the use of a Windows application to transmit the data required to personalize the passports, he said.
While Hofmann can look confidently to the city's future, he recognizes that switching to Linux is not for everyone. Yet even those who don't want to switch can still profit from the city's experience: "Some guy once told me, 'Since you started your project I can negotiate with Microsoft.'"
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
via: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9245353/Moving_a_city_to_Linux_requires_political_backing_says_Munich_project_leader?taxonomyId=122
译者：[译者ID](https://github.com/译者ID) 校对：[校对者ID](https://github.com/校对者ID)
本文由 [LCTT](https://github.com/LCTT/TranslateProject) 原创翻译，[Linux中国](http://linux.cn/) 荣誉推出
[1]:http://www.itworld.com/operating-systems/321474/switching-linux-saves-munich-over-11-million

65
translated/Moving a city to Linux requires political backing, says Munich project leader.md Normal file
View File

@ -0,0 +1,65 @@
慕尼黑市项目负责人称“将整个城市迁移到 Linux 需要政策支持”
================================================================================
> 慕尼黑市政府已将接近 15,000 台 PC 从 Windows NT 操作系统迁移到了其自有的 Linux 发行版
IDG 新闻服务 - 慕尼黑市十年前开始向 Linux 迁移，今年我们见证了这项工程竣工。“我们学到的最深一课是，你无法在没有持续政策支持的情况下完成这样的项目。”LiMux 项目的负责人 Peter Hofmann 在总结经验时说。
慕尼黑市政府将他们网络上 15,000 台 PC 中大约 14,800 台迁移到了他们自有的基于 Ubuntu 的 Linux——LiMux 上。这超出了他们原定迁移 12,000 台桌面计算机的计划。
慕尼黑市是在 Microsoft 声明将不再为 Windows NT 4.0 提供支持的时候决心迁移他们的 IT 系统的，因为他们使用的就是 Windows NT 4.0。当时，该市不得不在迁移到新版 Windows 和寻找一个替代平台之间做出抉择，因为新的软件以及现存软件的新版本都将无法在 Windows NT 上使用。市议会决定与 Linux 携手，和软件供应商们保持更加独立的关系。
Hofmann 说，政策支持是迁移成功的关键。
“我们从一至终都拥有政策的支持。我们得让政府官员们时刻掌握项目最新信息，就像对待股东一样。”他说。
借助这样的手段，这些政客们从未丧失对项目的兴趣，也始终能了解到项目干系人在做什么，他说。“我目睹过很多开源项目流产，”因为它们要么未得到、要么失去了政策支持，他说。
市政府原定 2009 年完成迁移计划，但事实上从最初作出决定到 LiMux 项目迁移完工大约耗费了十年时间。项目全程也经历了几次延期。
迁移工作在原计划一年之后才真正开始，这是第一次延期，Hofmann 说。第二次延期缘于 2007 年市议会的一个决定：慕尼黑市的 IT 部门也要负责 Linux 客户端基础设施所必须的标准化工作，他说。但是慕尼黑市既没有正确的程序也没有正确的组织来实现这种标准化，他说。
项目第三次延期是在 2010 年，当时市议会决定扩大项目规模，Hofmann 说。风险管理、测试管理和需求工程作为三个附加任务目标被加进了项目里。
尽管困难重重，Hofmann 说他仍然愿意明天再做一次。
慕尼黑市 IT 组织的异质性基础设施曾是该项目最大的问题之一，Hofmann 说。项目启动之初，22 个组织都有自己独有的配置、软硬件、进程、Windows 客户端知识以及相应投入使用的基础设施，他说。“我们想建设一个标准化的、集中交付和开发的 Linux 客户端，”他说。
Hofmann 预计，四分五裂的基础设施会造成问题。事实证明，不论从技术因素还是组织因素来看，标准化客户端的工作都比他预想的还要艰难。
幸运的是，他有足够的自由度重建整个城市的 IT 基础设施。
“任何人在打算迁移之前都要重新审视他们的整个 IT 组织。迁移到 Linux 远非节省开支和使用免费软件那么简单。”他补充道。
但慕尼黑市的迁移工作确确实实省钱了。2012 年 11 月，一名市议员答复道，慕尼黑市计算出迁移到 LiMux 会比更新已有 Microsoft 软件[节省超过 1100 万欧元][1]！
这项计算横向对比了 LiMux、Windows 7 + Microsoft Office、Windows 7 + OpenOffice（慕尼黑市为 LiMux 选择的生产力套件） 三种方案，包含必要的硬件升级、培训、外部迁移支持和优化事务以及其他指标。两个 Windows 方案都明显比 LiMux 方案昂贵很多，这主要缘于微软对软件使用许可收取的费用。
Hofmann 说，LiMux 不存在支持合同。“你要支持合同干什么？实际上你并没有得到支持，你得到的是新版本。你需要它的唯一理由来自于你的律师，他让你这么做以便日后出现问题有责任人可以追究。我们不追究任何人，我们自己会搞定那些问题，”他说。
如果慕尼黑市的 IT 人员不能自己修复 bug，他们可以寻求专家解决特定的 bug，Hofmann 说。“你不再依赖从软件供应商那里买来的服务，你依靠你自己和你掌握的信息，”他说。
尽管这样，抱怨依然存在。从外部组织收到的 Word 和 Excel 文档有时候不得不做些更改再发回去，这样一来会给互通性造成麻烦，他说。慕尼黑市正在说服与他们通信的人员使用 OpenOffice 的 ODF 格式文档，或者对不需要修改的文档使用 PDF 格式，Hofmann 说。慕尼黑市已经借助这一途径协助了互通工具在金融业的推广。
作为 OpenOffice 迁移计划的一部分，慕尼黑市还实现了 WollMux。这是一个用于模板和表单的 Office 扩展，于 2008 年以自由软件的形式发布，如今已经被少数其他组织采用，他说。
清除 Microsoft Office 的工作中还存在其他一些障碍——该市内部应用程序对数以千计的 Microsoft Office 和 Visual Basic 宏的依赖就是其中之一，Hofmann 说。
如今仍然有约 100 个这样的宏在为数不多的 Windows PC 上使用。
“我们的目标从来都不是彻底清除 Windows，”他说，尽管该市已经超出了迁移 80% PC 的最初目标并且一直运转良好。
以财政部门为例，三台 Windows PC 仍然在运行特殊的银行软件。如果要迁移到 LiMux，市政府得付钱让软件供应商为这三台机器上运行的应用程序开发 LiMux 版本，Hofmann 说。
该市与德国政府印刷护照的“联邦印刷”打交道时也面临类似的问题。联邦印刷要求使用一个 Windows 应用程序发送护照所需的个人数据，他说。
Hofmann 在对这个城市的未来信心满怀的时候也认识到并不是所有人都适合迁移到 Linux。但即使不想迁移到 Linux 的人也一样可以从慕尼黑市的经验中得益：“曾有人对我说，‘从你启动项目那时起，我就可以和 Microsoft 谈判了。’”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
译自: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9245353/Moving_a_city_to_Linux_requires_political_backing_says_Munich_project_leader?taxonomyId=122
译者：[sailing](https://github.com/blueabysm) 校对：[校对者ID](https://github.com/校对者ID)
本文由 [LCTT](https://github.com/LCTT/TranslateProject) 原创翻译，[Linux中国](http://linux.cn/) 荣誉推出
[1]:http://www.itworld.com/operating-systems/321474/switching-linux-saves-munich-over-11-million