Open Source Secrets in Vienna

Sometime after Munich announced they would be converting all of their 14,000 city administration computers to a customized linux distribution called "LiMux Linux", the city of Vienna announced a voluntary conversion program, which would allow the city departments to choose whether they wanted to have Microsoft Windows, or another customized Linux distribution called "Wienux Linux". Voluntary conversion has not been successful in Vienna.

A controversy is now brewing in Vienna now over an open source study called "STOSS2". STOSS 1 was the study which justified the attempted conversion to Linux, but the findings of STOSS2 are being kept secret. Comically, the secrecy is being justified on the grounds that the findings "can't be allowed to fall into the hands of the competition". The competition being unnamed software companies, according to ORF broadcasting in Vienna.

Since the study is kept secret, the only responsible thing to do is to make wild speculations about what this means. My guess? Vienna needs to keep STOSS2 secret so they can play the Linux card when negotiating with Microsoft, even though they are never really going to convert to Linux.

Of course, no one still believes that Vienna could migrate to Linux, even if they tried. Just ask Munich.

Here's another wild speculation: Maybe they are keeping STOSS2 secret because they do not want to hurt Munich's feelings! If the STOSS2 report is honest, it must conclude that the failure in Munich proves that it is not currently feasible to convert to Linux. That would be very embarassing for the city of Munich to be stabbed in the back by Vienna like that, so maybe that's why Vienna will not release the results of STOSS2.

The best thing would be for the city of Vienna to release STOSS2 so this unsubstantiated speculation can end. The citizens of Vienna paid for the report, so they should naturally be entitled to read it.