bird - 11:16 am on Jun 22, 2004 (gmt 0)

"As you get into the second and third year of a transition, you have to question how much free support you will get and you might regret the decision if you don't have the internal capacity to sustain a system that's outside the framework of what most of the whole world uses."

I'd like to see how this issue (the real issue) is addressed in the long term. Seems like IBM and Novell are using linux as a loss leader to sell consulting services.

As Microsoft intended to do, by lowering their bid from 36 to 24 million.
And of course there would be followup costs (consulting, expensive license upgrades, etc.) with a Windows based solution as well. The article doesn't really include enough information for an educated cost comparison.

What's most interesting is that it appears to be an economic decision, not a technology one.

Interesting, but not surprising. The followup costs of the Linux solution will be determined on a competitive market. The followup costs of a Windows solution would be determined by Microsoft alone.

At the end of the day you have to hope that the City of Munich, just like any responsible 'company', will hire some subject matter experts in-house to manage the network/software.

They do: "Munich expects that its own programmers will be able to provide most of the software."

Hey, this *has* to work out positively. I'd really hate to deal with any more chaos at the local authorities... ;)