Barcelona will start using Linux and Open Source software

Diolinux

The city of Barcelona will adopt Ubuntu and various free software as standard throughout its government infrastructure. According to the report El PaĂ­s the migration will be done in parts and calmly so that there are no errors.

According to the information, the complete change should occur in Spring 2019 in Barcelona, ​​until then, all applications will be gradually replaced by applications that are compatible with Linux, such as LibreOffice to the detriment of Microsoft Office, until finally only Windows remains as proprietary software on the workstations, making migration to Linux much simpler, since all employees will already know how to use the tools.

The city’s goals with Linux and open software

According to the commissioner of Technology and Innovation of the Barcelona City Council, Francesca Bria, the city has plans to use 70% of its budget for IT with the Open Source software structure.

Among the objectives with this migration are the support to local talent in the IT sector, the support can be made by several small and medium companies that exist in the outskirts of the city, allied to that, the city wants to encourage the creation of jobs for new developers , there will be 65 positions for local developers who helped create, adapt and support software that needs to meet specific needs.

To achieve this, one of the objectives of the migration project includes a kind of online platform, through which small companies will be able to participate in public tenders to serve the city with Linux, expanding and diversifying the job market, encouraging the development of software open.

As a basis for the project, the distro chosen by Barcelona is Ubuntu. There are currently 1,000 machines running as part of a pilot project, the report also reveals that the Outlook E-mail client and Exchange Server will be replaced by Open-Xchange and Thunderbird; Firefox and LibreOffice will be used in place of Internet Explorer and Microsoft Office.

“Public money, public software”

This is the motto that is being put together with the proposal. The line of reasoning is simple: since the software structure that controls and moves the city is funded by public money, there is nothing more fair than making this technology accessible and going back to the Catalans themselves. This initiative is part of a project that wants to take that motto to most of Europe.

Another factor considered, of course, is money. The shift from Windows to open software endorses the idea that developed programs can be used elsewhere in Spain, the more cities that adapt Linux and open source software, the cheaper it becomes to develop and maintain anything, moreover , although the number is not revealed, Bria comments that this exchange will help save a lot of money on software licenses that belong to a third party company that cannot be modified according to the city’s needs due to Copyright limitations.

At the beginning of the year we had the news from the city of Munich, Germany, returning to Windows after almost 10 years using Linux.

There was a lot of criticism about this, including the Germans, who also liked the idea of ​​“public money, public software” more and there are many controversies on the subject, keep the video I made on the subject at the time:

What do you think about it? Leave your opinion in the comments and see you next time!