Linux migration proposal for Berlin rejected

A petition to use more open source tools in the Berlin city administration that was proposed in the federal state parliament of the State of Berlin by the German Green Party has failed. The petition was rejected with the votes of the governing SPD/CDU coalition in the "digital administration" committee tasked with its evaluation. The Green Party's plan had included a migration to free and open source software on 25 per cent of the city administration's workstations and a comprehensive switch of all servers to Linux in a similar fashion to Munich's LiMux project.

Members of the SPD party had remarked that the city's tender strategy regarding open source software had been made clear enough as part of the plan and had also warned of using open source in security-relevant situations. Members of the CDU party criticised the proposal for expressing a bias towards open source software over proprietary solutions. The two governing parties instead passed a petition that sees the city and state of Berlin "generally adopting more open standards". The Green Party responded that the alternative petition was actually lowering the standards for open source adoption below the previous requirements.

Berlin's Green Party has been fighting for increased open source adoption for several years and had already seen a similar petition fail under the previous SPD/The Left government.

See also:

• Linux brings over €10 million savings for Munich, a report from The H.
  

(fab)