Onslaught against Lock-in & Monoploy
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| Fettoosh Dec 03, 2012 2:35 PM EDT |
Quoting:Against this backdrop, the council's decision to put the OpenOffice experiment out of its misery and allow its staff to get back to working properly is understandable. Pretty good article summarizing the obstacles and road blocks faced by Munich and the efforts made to successfully overcome MS lock-in & monopoly. Unfortunately, Freiburg didn't [edited] reach to the same results. The fact that, two organizations that basically have similar IT requirements and functions yet the results are different is indicative of couple things: Migrating from MS to FOSS is doable and more importantly beneficial, and if an organization is committed and convinced of such effort, it better do its home work in planning and preparing to avoid failure Munich has better IT staff who foreseen the benefits of FOSS, made the commitment to break the lock-in/monopoly, and most importantly, took the matters very seriously. They took their time understanding the situation, established objectives, developed requirements and plans, and persisted to achieve their goals. Freiburg should have learned and gained from the Munich experience. Obviously they didn't. |
| BernardSwiss Dec 03, 2012 8:59 PM EDT |
Freiburg is one of the three dozen largest cities in Germany -- and the other three dozen or so cities in this class have been participating in a general drive to implement Open Source software and Open Document Formats, and having quite good results in managing similar migrations to FOSS.software. These cities have also made a point of collaborating and sharing expertise and experience in these efforts, so Freiburg has not been forced to "go it alone" or been unable to take advantage of advice from others in very similar circumstances. Part of the hullabaloo about the Freiburg return to the Microsoft fold was the recent incident of the "expert consultant's report" commissioned by Freiburg IT. This report declared the migration a stumbling failure and recommended promptly returning to MS and proprietary software. But despite the attention given to this recommendation the report was (aside from these damning conclusions and very broad brush-stokes) apparently deemed too 'top secret' for the eyes of the Freiburg city councillors Over the years, I have acquired the distinct impression that from the very beginning the Freiburg IT staff (and much of the non-IT staff) actively and stubbornly opposed the migration. They didn't want this project to succeed -- and did want the migration to fail. So of course it did fail. I personally suspect there was a fair bit of politics, covert collusion and subtle sabotage involved. |
| Fettoosh Dec 03, 2012 10:02 PM EDT |
Quoting:... and did want the migration to fail. So of course it did fail. I thought it would be the case and they ought to be fired. I wonder how the other cities are doing, any news about their progress? |
| BernardSwiss Dec 03, 2012 11:46 PM EDT |
I see that I have overstated the prevalence of such projects. However, besides Munich I find Jena, Leipzig, and other German cities, large and small, have had successful projects along these lines. (And the vote was apparently 25-20) |
| helios Dec 04, 2012 10:36 AM EDT |
And never, ever, evvveeerrrrr underestimate the power of a whiny employee. Ever. |
| gus3 Dec 04, 2012 1:10 PM EDT |
Quoting:And never, ever, evvveeerrrrr underestimate the power of a whiny employee. Ever.The only power such a one inherently has, is to get him/herself fired. All other powers are granted by the powers-that-be. |
| helios Dec 04, 2012 5:28 PM EDT |
Oh no Gus....some of the places I've worked, especially when employee work stations were concerned, the movement of one icon on the desktop sent howls of outrage throughout the workforce. Yeah, in a perfect world, such people would be shown the door but when you manage extremely specialized and talented people, they wield the might. The article about the movement back to MS Office in Freiburg even alluded strongly to employee sniveling facilitated the switch back. Management can easily be manipulated, given the choice of capitulation or spending 6 months to a year filling a highly specialized slot. Especially when XYZ corp has an open position for that employee to run to. |
| caitlyn Dec 04, 2012 6:38 PM EDT |
I work in a place (state government agency in the U.S., as a contractor) where this migration (as least in terms of Office suite) was done successfully before I ever got here. It can work. It should work. It really should take some degree of effort to make it not work. |
| Bob_Robertson Dec 05, 2012 11:23 AM EDT |
Where I work it was tried, but there had already been such an investment into complex, macro-driven spreadsheets, that MS Office was impossible to move from. Effectively, they programmed in Excel. |
| Fettoosh Dec 05, 2012 12:00 PM EDT |
Quoting:It really should take some degree of effort to make it not work. Not really. If the IT staff aren't convinced, it is very easy for them to sabotage any effort initiated by management or anyone else for that matter. IT staff should be convinced and enthusiastic to gain the support of the users first. Management almost always goes with what the users want and need since they are considered to be the ones doing the productive work, not the IT staff. IT staff can never convince all the users, but they only need influential key users to succeed. |
| gus3 Dec 05, 2012 12:52 PM EDT |
Quoting:the movement of one icon on the desktop sent howls of outrageThen I'm inclined to think they were trained monkeys, rather than observant, rational humans. Sorry, I just tend to be rather unsympathetic towards unobservant types. |
| BernardSwiss Dec 05, 2012 8:32 PM EDT |
Is anyone up to date on the options for converting MS Office macros into OpenOffice and/or Libre Office macros? I seem to recall that such a feature was one of the reasons to pay for the Paid and Supported version of OO.o from Sun. I don't know how that's evolved since -- especially with the take-over by Oracle since then. |
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