The City Of Barcelona is prepping to ditch Microsoft completely and use open-source technologies on its computer systems.
According to a report by a Spanish newspaper El País (via It’s Foss), the city will first replace all the user applications on its computers with open source alternatives. It later will shift from Windows to Linux operating system after replacing all the Windows proprietary software.
The main aim of the migration is to encourage the local small and medium-sized IT enterprises. Development of digital market – an online platform to allow small business take part in public tenders in one of the major projects of the city.
To achieve the goal, the City’s administration would be hiring new developers to build software programs. And it plans to spend 70 percent of the City’s software budget on developing the open-source software in 2018 and complete the transition before Spring 2019. According to Francesca Bria, the City Council’s Commissioner of Technology and Digital Innovation, “the programs that are developed could be deployed to other municipalities in Spain or elsewhere around the world.”
It is expected that Ubuntu will be considered the preferable Linux distro because of the already running pilot project in the City which is running 1,000 Ubuntu-powered machines. Exchange Server and Outlook mail client will be replaced with Open-Xchange while Internet Explorer and Microsoft Office will be replaced by Mozilla Firefox and LibreOffice respectively as per the news report.
Shifting from proprietary software to open-source will save a lot of money in the future for the City of Barcelona. What do you think of this move? Share your views in the comments below!
