Microsoft chief dines in a Linux city

Thomas Crampton - Technology - International Herald Tribune: "Speaking at a private dinner with select captains of German industry on Wednesday, Steven Ballmer, chief executive of Microsoft, may have felt a small sense of triumph in his company's battle against open source software.

A year ago, the Munich city government became a poster child for the open source movement by signing on to a high profile switchover from Microsoft products to the free Linux operating system.

The city's move to Linux, however, has been delayed and troubled, a situation that seems to vindicate views expressed by Ballmer about the drawbacks to open source software.

But the city official implementing the Linux project - who was not invited to the event - disagreed strongly with much of what Ballmer said.

During the dinner, organized by Hubert Burda Media and attended by chief executive officers from Adidas, BMW and the energy giant EnBW, Ballmer was asked whether open source projects and other collaborative working structures now being pioneered on the Internet would make current corporate structures irrelevant.

Ballmer said there is a clear movement toward such a working style, even within Microsoft. But he emphasized his faith in the long-term viability of the classic corporate structure and its advantages over volunteer projects.

"Corporations - paid entities - offer things that free systems do not," Ballmer said. "Consistency over the years and brand."

For Munich, however, the decision to leave Microsoft was and is a good one, said Peter Hofmann, project manager for the city's Linux migration.

A major impetus was city officials' outrage at the cost of upgrading to Microsoft's XP operating system. Eighty percent of the city's 14,000 computers and 16,000 users are moving to Linux. But the implementation date is next year, a year later than originally planned.

"This city will never be forced to pay for an upgrade of software again," Hofmann said. "That said, it will probably be at least five years until we realize any major savings."

For Ballmer, however, the typical corporation offers more than just innovative products. "Our brand means there is someone you can call if there is a problem, and some of these things don't come out of the non-paid volunteer format."

To Hofmann, Ballmer's logic is false. "When we implement a Microsoft product, we can only call one person for help with the software and that is Microsoft," Hofmann said. He said if one Linux specialist company did not provide sufficient support, the city "can change over easily to another in one year."

Hofmann said the problems related to Linux involved the limited applications available in the operating system as well as the city council's questions about potential patent risks associated with open source software.

"For applications it came down to a chicken-and-egg question," Hofmann said. "Authors do not want to write software for an application unless there are users, but the users are not there until it is written."

The question of software patents delayed the project significantly after a council member asked for an assessment of the risk undertaken by the city in using open source software should the EU implement a much discussed ability to patent software"