On the heels of Munich's decision to, once again, opt for open-source software, the Hamburg city-state politicians have decided to follow suit. This declaration is an agreement between the Social Democrat and Green political parties and will define how Hamburg is governed and run for the next five years.

Because this plan is still in the early stages, it has yet to be signed off on. Even so, the transition to open-source software appears to be a done deal. Hamburg will make use of the cloud-based web workstation, Project Phoenix, from Dataport. This open-source solution will provide word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, email, calendar, and storage solutions. The one question surrounding this migration is if it will also include a migration away from Microsoft Windows to Linux.

This move comes as a surprise to many. As Peter Ganten, chairman of the Open Source Business Alliance (OSBA), based in Stuttgart, says, "The Hamburg decision is nevertheless remarkable because the city has always been more aggressively oriented towards Microsoft."

Farid Mueller, head of the local Hamburg-Mitte branch of the Greens, wrote on his blog, "Zukünftig wollen wir in Hamburg  noch mehr auf Open Source (Fach-)Anwendungen in der digitalen Verwaltung setzen und auch selbst eigene entwickeln, die dann quelloffen sein sollen." (rough translation - "In the future, we want to focus even more on open source (specialist) applications in digital administration in Hamburg and also develop our own, which should then be open-source.")

Original source: https://www.derstandard.at/story/2000117835703/open-source-hamburg-blaest-zum-ausstieg-von-microsoft