Well, one more local government in Germany announced they're migrating to Linux; this time it's Leonberg. (See http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/44802) It's a small town, and they're only migrating 400 or so workstations, but it's a growing trend. France is starting to get into the act, too; Paris is reportedly considering migrating to Linux.
Yet these towns face terrible odds. Fully half the specialized applications used by Munich don't have any Linux equivalent (source: http://www01.silicon.de/cpo/ts-csh/detail.php?nr=13043 ), and the situation is probably similar for the smaller towns. As it stands, Munich and other towns still need to run some Windows applications. Yet the idea of using Wine to do this has not percolated through to the public conciousness; the method usually cited is to use VmWare or Microsoft Terminal Server.
Therefore, I suspect Wine really needs to reach out to local governments in Germany and France and let them know that the Wine community is very interested in helping them make the transition to Linux.
I would like to start by creating a page at winehq.org that has information for towns considering migrating to Linux (links to feasability studies done by other cities come to mind). If nobody's opposed, I'll submit a patch to add that (though it may take a while, I'm fighting RSI again).
Also, I think we need a mailing list, e.g. wine-gov@winehq.org, where they can post questions and/or discuss their situation. (Yes, they could use wine-users, but that's full of all sorts of topics that might not mix well with staid government workers; some of the games discussed there might even be banned in Germany...) They should be allowed to post in their native language if they feel more comfortable there; we have enough French and German speakers to be able to handle that, I think. If nobody's opposed, I'll post a separate message proposing its creation in a couple days.
A few letters to companies consulting for these towns might also be in order. Here's an example letter. Any native German speakers out there, please feel free to correct my German! Once we have the web page and mailing list set up, we could send a few letters like this out. I think it'd really help.
Thanks, Dan
------- An: Soluzione
Die WINE-Gemeinde gratuliert Ihre Firme zu Ihrem Linux Migrationsberatung im Auftrag der Stadt Leonberg! (http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/44802)
Man behauptet (z.B. http://www01.silicon.de/cpo/ts-csh/detail.php?nr=13043), dass Fachanwendungen ein grosses Problem fuer den Umsteig auf Linux darstellen, denn die meisten davon sind (noch) nicht Linuxfaehig.
Wie Sie vielleicht wissen, laeuft MS-Office 2000 unter Linux mit Hilfe von Wine. Wir sind eifrig, unsere Unterstutzung fuer Fachanwendungen zu verbessern. Mehr Infos ueber unsere kostenloses Quelleoffene Software gibt es bei http://www.winehq.org/ Komerzielle Unterstutzung und Beratung ueber Wine gibt es bei http://codeweavers.com.
Haben Sie schon auf Fachandwendung gestossen, die unter Linux nicht (oder nicht gut) laufen? Wenn schon, dann bitte lassen Sie die WINE-Gemeinde das wissen lassen. Am Besten koennen Sie Kontakt aufnehmen durch unsere wine-gov Mailinglist (siehe http://www.winehq.org/mailman/listinfo/wine-gov ).
MfG
Dan Kegel
fuer die WINE-Gemeinde
Softwareingeneur Open Source Advocate, http://kegel.com Webmaster, http://www.lalugs.org Occasional contributor to Wine (http://winehq.org) Occasional contributor to OpenOffice QA (http://kegel.com/openoffice) --------