Munich to Replace VMware and Oracle with Open Source

Munich's chief digital officer, Laura Dornheim, announced at Open Source Summit Europe that the city is replacing proprietary infrastructure and collaboration software with open-source alternatives, according to zdnet.com.

The city is moving from VMware to Proxmox for virtualization, from Jira and Confluence to OpenProject and XWiki for project management and documentation, and from Oracle databases to PostgreSQL. The infrastructure and collaboration migrations are expected to save roughly €1.5 million or more annually.

Munich is not bringing back its LiMux Linux desktop deployment, the former tailor-made distribution the city previously used.

The city is also helping to build software for its own needs and for other cities.

Munich's earlier open-source push began in May 2003, when the council voted to migrate to LiMux, with rollout starting in earnest in 2006. By December 2013, more than 14,800 desktops ran LiMux, and a European Commission Open Source Observatory case study reported savings of about €11 million from dropping Windows. After the 2014 municipal election, the political climate changed, and by November 2017 the council voted to return its computers to Windows with a target of 2020. The migration from LibreOffice to Microsoft Office was completed in 2023.