Linux Munich Crisis; doesn't look good

What is going on?

What always goes on... what has been going on with Lockheed for the F-104, and so many other things... large corporate political corruption. Don't you know the saying that it's easier to get a hungry dog past a butcher shop than a socialist politician past a stack of money? That is exactly what has been going on in Munich.

Microsoft made it's new European headquarters for this and that near Munich, gave the new socialist major the time of his life, and financed a really good looking professional report by accenture for the mayor to throw linux out without needing much further explanations. And who doesn't trust Accenture right, the jolly consulting company that was once one of the "big 5" under the name Andersen Consulting, but then had some serious problems when it turned out they were criminal as fuck, and they changed their name in Accenture and moved their "business focus" from the financial market and accountancy services to IT and HRM services, without really changing anything. But Andersen, known for the Enron scandal, convicted of fraud and obstruction of justice, succeeded in pushing the right knobs so that the Supreme Court reversed the conviction, and this is known as one of the funniest decisions the Supreme Court has ever made, reading that decision is like reading a comedy script.

So that very accenture made a Microsoft-sponsored study and dismissed the Munich Linux project so that the bribed politicians could have an alibi that looks believable.

Another serious problem is the German company SAP, one of the biggest companies in Germany, and developers and vendors of the well known instruments of job decimation and globalist oppression. They have been selling the same old crap over and over again. Big companies like SAP not because of the software, which sucks like you can't believe, but for the Accenture-effect... it allows big globalist companies to analyse what jobs to cut where, how to suck their workforce dry, and where to run for maximum lawlessness and exploitability. Well, SAP hasn't been doing so great. That is a structural problem, because once all the globalist creeps have their SAP, there are only going to be less of them needing to spend less money in order to earn more money, that's just the nature of ultra-capitalism. And SAP really needs a boost, and the problem is that they don't have the best developers, they are closed source and they don't have any products that run on Linux because they don't have the skills for that. So SAP, which is of course a popular cheerleader in the globalist team, has been pushing to move away from Linux for a very long time, pointing out the enormous benefits of saving on people versus saving on software licenses. As soon as the news came out that the mayor of Munich rejects any option that is based upon Linux, SAP published that they considerably raise their dividend.

And yes folks, now we've come to the bottom line: yet again, socialist politician wants to save on people instead of on software licenses and corrupt hardware deals. And why: because a socialist is cheaper to buy than a back alley prostitute, there are just more prostitutes in a socialist outfit to buy a blowjob from than hookers in a red light district.

The only thing Munich did wrong in those 15 years of Linux, is to be too ambitious by thinking they could make their own distro and maintain and service it with a small team. They should have gone for an OpenSuSE approach with independent service providers. The only other thing Munich did wrong, is have professional politicians, but yeah, that's what everybody does wrong, innit?

The CEO of KDE has offered Munich a complete solution, that would not cost at least 96 MILLION EUROS (which is the first reliable estimation of what it costs to migrate from Linux to Windows). But just like Lockheed preferred to pay 22 Million bucks to various German politicians to sell the F-104's that were so crappy that over 200 F-104's accidentally crashed killing over 110 German pilots, and forcing the Germany Luftwaffe to buy parallel airplane models just to have something that works in case of an actual military mission, leading to incredibly high extra costs, also this Munich software corruption deal will have a backlash in the end:
Lockheed came on the black list outside of the US (where the F-104 never made it, the US Navy and Airforce preferred designs based on Nazi scientist research, like for instance Alexander Lippisch etc, which were actually viable for pilots and actual combat duty), and Lockheed had to pull off their bribery tricks on a heavily reduced market (US, Canada, Australia, some other countries, most of then having cancelled their orders by now) for their next technical failure of an airplane, the F-35.
Lockheed over the years lost most of its civil aircraft market, most of its military aircraft market, and had to pull a rabbit out of a hat to sell the nonsensical F-35, which it could in a period of detente where the Eastern Block had fell and Russia had become capitalist. But now that tensions are building up again and there in actual threat of military intervention that couldn't be solved with the good old surplus F-4F's from the Vietnam war any more, there is a serious problem, and Trump needs to sell the tax payers on the idea of increasing the defence budget, because quite frankly, those ageing F-16's are the only thing the US has left that is a combat worthy airframe.

The very same thing will happen to Munich when the true consequences of the corruption that is taking place now become clear in the future.

Munich is not without problems. It is a city with a lot of expensive flair, made big with the money from an economy that boomed around the Quandt empire. Well, Johanna Quandt died in 2015 and it's not looking too good for the German auto industry, with Mercedes barely selling anything in Germany any more because stupid cars, BMW not doing great with the electric cars, VW group caught up in a money grabbing scheme they thought they could get away with at the expense of quality of cars and at the expense of the consumers, etc... which means that Munich is really starting to feel that they are not on top of the food chain in Germany any more. The focus of the German economy is shifting slowly, shifting to the North. Just like NRW was once the chicken with the golden eggs in Germany, and then everything broke together, that is starting to happen now to Bavaria. The former capital of West-Germany, Bonn, just south of Cologne, is now a sad story, it's basically a 75% Arabic enclave with the German CIA headquarters in the middle of it lol. All the former prestigious office buildings are vacant or dilapidated, German people have moved away, popular cultural events like rock festivals have been cancelled forever, the city center at night looks like Beirut. Negative consequences of political decisions can spread really fast. When that happens, in the wake thereof, there is always a panicky money-grabbing response from politicians, they want to grab everything they can while it's still there, regardless of consequences, and thereby, instead of stopping the decline, they accelerate it. That is what is happening in Munich, that is why the rich are moving away from Munich, that is why so many problematic elements are allowed to walk around freely in Munich... it's a typical socialist money-grabbing arena, and the population is going to pay a very dear price for it.

And just like Microsoft is making the software for the drugs traffickers in the US, the new fascinating market, they are preying on the weakened City of Munich, and have pushed the right buttons. Guess we'll know in 30 years or so how much money was shoved to whom under which table, and what the ultimate extent of the total damage was.

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LOL, love it, someone really needs to put some @Zoltan on-a-rant quotes to the Downfall Bunker scene...

...of course, it wouldn't make sense to Zoltan, he speaks German, but for us ignorant Anglo-Americans it would be funny...

This is true.

Munich is not the Munich it was 15 years ago when it moved to linux. Back then it was at the height of the economic golden era of the city and of Bavaria. Things are changing now.

In France, the military and police run entirely open source, more open source than Munich ever did actually, because in Munich there was still about 10% of Windows usage spoiling the fun for everyone.

Also in Russia and China, there is only open source in public service, with their own distros. Those are the two main growth markets in the world for the moment, and they literally won't have anything to do with Microsoft.

What really has happened, is that Microsoft was defeated flagrantly and repeatedly by Linux at a time when Munich was still a strategic point of interest. After everyone left the old battlegrounds, and there was nothing really left to fight for, and it was safe to sneak back in like a thief in the night, Microsoft came back to Munich and makes a triumphant picture of itself standing on the desolate battleground.
That is pretty much what happens in Munich.

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Would anyone be complaining if Alphabet or Apple were doing this? I'm defending MS here, but sometimes I feel MS is treated like "Big Blue" was back in the day. Basically a big, mean, boogie man

Could you explain this a bit more? As far as I am aware, the report doesn't state that at all. Yes the report is being missued but Accenture did not dismiss the Linux project. Please correct me if I'm wrong but provide evidence if that is the case.

"However the main issues listed in the report were identified to be organizational ones and not related to Free Software operating systems and applications."

Lydia Pintscher
President, KDE e.V.
source

and

That report recommended giving staff a choice between Windows/Office and LiMux/LibreOffice. Should Windows and Office prove popular, the report said that the continued financial viability of supporting Linux should be investigated.
source

I don't believe MS have done anything wrong here (not from the present facts anyway).

I pointed out that Accenture (2016 MS partner of the year) appears to have presented a fair and unbiased report on the current state of Munich's IT infrastructure. People are quick to jump to conclusions though.

You're asking me to explain why Accenture is covering it's arse in it's report? Easy, one word: Enron lol.

The link between Accenture and Microsoft does not need to be established ba me, nor does the link between SAP and Microsoft, nor does the fact that Microsoft made it's German headquarter for this and that (because Microsoft has more headquarters than toilets for staff) in Munich, nor does the fact that SAP is not doing so great.

Everyone can tie everything together as they like for themselves.

Errors were made in the LiMux project. The first error they made is that they didn't bank on German software development, but went for Debian and then Ubuntu. The reason for this is probably because they couldn't go with Novell/Corel at the time because of politics. Germany is still "allied" occupied territory, it's pretty much illegal to fart in Germany without at least sharing the wind with the NSA and CIA. Second error is that they wanted to do this the German way, show that you could actually have a complete functional very large ITC setup without spending a dime, by never replacing any hardware and by forcing people to make endless protocols and schedules for every single move. In the end, they couldn't even get IT staff because the conditions for hiring were too strict to suit every involved political agenda. This is typical Germanic, it's the ultimate blame-culture that criticizes itself to death. Third error is that they just had to have their own distribution, and that's a flagrant faulty analysis of needs and requirements of the public service: they needed people on the floor fixing printers and overheating CPU's in systems that hadn't been dusted for years, they didn't need those people sitting in front of PC's all days trying to figure out how to maintain a proprietary linux distro for a completely hybrid ageing fleet of IT hardware. Instead they should have gone with OpenSuSE and private local IT enterprises for software servicing, and have IT people on the floor solving practical problems.

The thing is, the Accenture report doesn't offer any solutions. Migrating to Windows for a lot of money and firing a lot of people doesn't offer any solution. The only thing that can be done that makes sense, is make a realistic plan to update the hardware and software, in open source, with support staff on the floor, using a large distro with full German documentation and support (i.e. OpenSuSE, KDE, LibreOffice, Kolab, etc... all the main super popular and proven enterprise solutions are native German solutions), and providing hands-on training by experienced people who do not talk out of their arse because they have the diploma but not the experience.

Is Microsoft going to solve anything? That would be a first lol. Is the dismissal of Linux that has been going on from the socialist politics in Munich for the last couple of years based upon the Accenture report that is brand new? Obviously not. OK, tie everything together, and you tell me why the dismissal of Linux by politicians and the proposal of Microsoft as the ultimate solution (oh and Germans have a history of proposing ultimate solutions that spoil the fun for everyone) started with this mayor and was accompanied by the decision of Microsoft to build a new headquarter near Munich, even before there was even the slightest hint on any analysis or consultancy?

As I said, everyone draws his/her own conclusions. Back in the day, half of the Naval Air component and the Luftwaffe was fired because they had criticism on the decision to go for the F-104 Starfighter, and it wasn't until with the Watergate scandal in the 70's that - purely by accident - it was discovered that Lockheed had paid over 22 million dollars in bribes to German politicians (and that was in 1957 money, so go figure). There is actual legislation in the US as a direct consequence of the Lockheed F-104 corruption abroad, Jimmy Carter made it in 1977, but it only made corruption towards foreign politicians illegal directly from the US, it didn't outlaw corruption in the US and/or corruption by foreign entities of US companies abroad. In Germany though, there were never legislative initiatives to specifically prevent large scale political corruption like the Lockheed Starfighter debacle. If it weren't for the Brits having lost a major part of their military aviation and space development because of the Lockheed corruption, Germany would never have done anything with that expensive lesson. Luckily, the Brits got smarter because of it and Eurofighter Typhoon was developed by the Germans in a cooperation with the Brits and other EU countries, which prevents similar mishaps in that particular realm, but you wouldn't believe how helicopters, cars, tanks, "smart weapons", drones and other killing toys are traded, and you probably wouldn't even want to know to be honest.

The similarities between the Lockheed Starfighter project and the Munich Windows migration project are striking. It's not something people will talk a lot about explicitly because that would cost them their job or worse, but there is no denying that it doesn't make any sense at all.

Microsoft has its own Linux distro, Intel has one, NASA has one, the LHC folk have one, the NSA has one, The One Laptop per Child project has one, Miley Cyrus has one, there is even a satanic version of Ubuntu... oh yes, and all people breath air, that doesn't make air a symbol of fascism (yet... maybe if Microsoft discovers the air market?)

That's just it, Microsoft was always treated very well, despite the fact that they turned on IBM, then turned on Compaq and co, then screwed up so many times and still people didn't drop them, and in the end, they reward the people by spying on them and by robbing them of money and rights in a huge backstabbing operation.

Oh and Google isn't any better lol, nor is Apple.

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The old joke was:

Q. How do acquire a Starfighter?
A. Buy some farmland in W.Germany and just wait...

Whilst it was proven that Lockheed made bribes people should also bear in mind that the F104 was only known as the Erdnagel (ground magnet??) in Luftwaffe service. Once the head of the W.German Air Force grounded the entire fleet and changed the training of the ground-crews and pilots it's accident rate was no worse than the other NATO countries that used it.

That doesn't change the fact that putting an inexperienced pilot in an F104 was like giving an 18 year old a Honda CBR however. It was an aircraft for experienced pilots and why the Germans decided to use in the Ground Attack and Nuclear Strike role can probably only be explained by bribes... but as a point defence fighter it was very good.

The subsequent pan European Tornado and Typhoon projects have arguably created some of the best modern aircraft around. The Tornado has often been given a hard time by the media, especially the Air Defence role F3, but what is mostly unknown is that once the RAF funded the radar, missile and inter-link upgrades (that it should have had by 1990) the Red team F-16's couldn't get near any aircraft the Tornado F3's were escorting in the Red Flag exercises. Not bad for an air-frame that started life designed only for the Ground Attack role and then converted to shoot down unescorted Soviet bombers over the North Sea!

Anyway, well off topic but cold war era aircraft are fascinating :-)

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You could about 40 years ago, when I was a teenager. Today, the media is all about Revenue Streams.

No I didn't ask that. You stated:

So I took what you said as 'Accenture dismissed the Munich Linux project'. Is that what you were saying?

Again you said:

Now forgive me if I'm a bit slow today but this seems counter-intuitive. First you say Accenture's report is for the mayor to throw out linux without much explanation and you say Accenture cannot be trusted. But when I say that it appears Accenture did an impartial job, you say its Accenture covering themselves? It cannot be both (unless this report was actually leaked and it was never meant to surface... but that's a whole other issue if there is any truth in that).

The report was not conducted to provide solutions. It was conducted to layout the current state of IT in Munich. So for the purpose of that objective, I think they did a good job. Do you?

Don't get me wrong; I agree with a lot of the sentimnet in what you are saying (although this is a Linux & OS focused forum so it'd be hard to find someone who doesn't) but I still think we need the truth.

Erdnagel could probably best be translated in English as "lawn dart" lol, which was pretty much the root mean square of the operational history of the thing.

The F-104 was such a joke. The Belgian Air Force also had them (of course lol, Brussels is like the world's bribe capital lol), and they had a very prestigious show outfit called the Red Devils, and they flew the totally antiquated glider-derived Fouga Magister trainers for their shows until a generation of ashamed combat pilots was gone and it could be sold as acceptable to do combat demos with subsonic trainers, and then they migrated to Alpha Jet, also a trainer, but at least not a glider plane. The Germans actually bought Fiat G.91's to have stuff that actually flew if it ever came to a real combat engagement. The F-104 was so bad that it made Fiat score a historical success in terms of reliability, so go figure lol. Also, the AIM-7's were pretty much completely useless at the time, pretty much until the late 60's, aereal combat was dogfighting, something NATO and the US just didn't train any pilots for any more, because missiles right, missiles like the AIM-7, which turned out to have a hit rate of 11%. The most successful fighter in Vietnam was the F-8 Crusader, by that time a hopelessly obsolete aircraft, but at least it could successfully engage enemy fighters with weapons, instead of trying to bore enemies to death with poor statistics.

But you're right, it's pretty off-topic to pursue the fascinating failure of corruption in allied military aviation. But I firmly stand by the analogy between the Munich Windows Migration and the Lockheed Starfighter, I think it's remarkable how similar the stories are: in the US, Microsoft is not finding the success its competitors have, yet abroad, against all objective odds, suddenly Microsoft is slotted in by executive political decision to make a bundle. It's just obviously corruption, and corruption only, that makes these things happen, just like the F-104. More pilots in allied nations have been killed in accidents with the F-104 than in actual combat after WWII... that looks like the kind of FUBAR that you would normally expect from Microsoft-infected operations lol.

It's not paradoxical at all, because the dismissal of linux has been going on since the current mayor came in office in Munich. The Accenture report dismisses the entire LiMux project, not with actual scientific concrete conclusions, but in a typical political way, with populist elements that may be true, but are also platitudes not specific to LiMux, but things that politicians can use in their typical discourse: "85% of users is unhappy", "we can't occupy 15% of staff vacations because we can't find anyone"... yeah because 85% of users is always unhappy if they have to wait for support, and support can't be given if there is no staff, and the staff can't be hired not because of what is suggested by the politicians, namely "that linux is too marginal so they can't find enough qualified people, so they should go to a more popular platform for which there are enough people available", but because the politicians put staffing requirements in place that don't allow for staffing. That is the underlying false construct that Accenture and Microsoft are a part of in the political discourse. That is the lie that is being spun. The dismissal of linux in favour of Microsoft was decided long ago, when the campaign of the mayor was financed and the subsidies for the construction of the Microsoft headquarters in Munich were approved. The whole Accenture report and the subsequent blablah that has been going on since, is just window(s) dressing.

Let me know if you are ever in London or Copenhagen, at the moment I'm usually in one of those two cities, occasionally Den Haag, I'll buy you a beer or 3 and we can put the world to rights :-)

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Yes, it's easy to say a lot as a consultant in a report without actually saying a lot, or inferring one thing whilst not specifically saying it so your backside is covered.

I've worked for Microsoft Gold Partners in the past and been hired to write an impartial report but then had to edit it because the sales director wants to earn recognition from Microsoft that client X bought MS product Y based on our advice. It stinks, a few years back one of the big Software Licence resellers actually got into trouble with Microsoft because they started abusing a Microsoft licence sales recognition programme that could have land Microsoft in hot water with the one commission or another. Microsoft subsequently canned that programme but they have other stuff still going on so consultancies partnered with them earn credit for influencing product sales. I believe the main push these days is for Azure adoption rather than software sales so this Munich thing has a whole 15 years ago feel to it.

EDIT: Just to say I haven't worked for an MS partner in a long time now, so it could be very different nowadays, but probably not...

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Definitely agree about the political bullshit that is occuring and that is where I see the problem. That is where I believe the focus should be directed. I believe that the Accenture report provides a lot evidence to support calling out the Munich politicians on their bullshit.

What I don't agree is total dismissal of everyone involved. I don't think it helps our argument. Stick to the relevant facts. Calling out Accenture/SAP and saying 'look how evil they are' does nothing for the cause. It degrades our credibilty. By acknowledging what's in their report and sticking with those points, I believe we get a much better argument across.

We may lose this way (because political crime pays), but at least we present ourselves professionally and we build our credibility. Maybe one day we won't lose.

I think it's pretty much a done deal, and the only thing that can be done is make sure that the fingerpointing at the right people and companies that deserve every bit of it, can prevent further corruption like this.

I found an interesting article that mentions how Microsoft is bribing or working directly with government institutuions to make sure they keep using M$ software.

Any government that tries to [switch to open source software] could find itself on the receiving end of a massive amount of political and corporate lobbying from the US government and companies like Microsoft. For example, there’s no open market for word processors, because there’s massive amount of political pressure. The US embassy will get involved in any country that tries to walk away from [Microsoft].

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Some European institutions and municipalities listened to expert warnings in the past and started even earlier than Italy and UK to ween off Microsoft’s programs. However, despite improved security and definite financial benefits of going open source, these institutions are still being heavily pressured to use Microsoft.

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Gendarmerie Nationale (GN), one of two national police forces in France, started moving to open source in 2001 in order to save money. GN has already gone completely open source and now the department’s 72,000 computers run on individually adapted Linux OS (some on GendBuntu) and have LibreOffice as the main application. According to the police force’s officials, the move has already saved around 20 million euros.

What’s perhaps most interesting about GN’s forward-thinking plan is that it was done in secret. According to an internal memo that IE obtained, GN officials were worried that changing to Linux could be seen as a threat to Microsoft’s monopoly — which could lead to certain parties trying to undermine GN’s policy. Therefore it was decided to carry out the switch in secrecy and only reveal it once the changes would be irreversible.

It seems that GN’s policy makers were correct in assuming there would be backlash, because even though the change has been completed and proven to be successful, there’s still great pressure on the police force to revert back to Microsoft

Source: https://thenextweb.com/eu/2017/05/10/europe-is-living-under-microsofts-digital-killswitch/

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This is such a bad idea. They're going to waste millions to make their systems less secure and less stable.