Talk Details

LiMux -- Free Software for Munich

Name Volker Grassmuck

Organisation Humboldt University / Wizards of OS

Website http://waste.informatik.hu-berlin.de/Grassmuck / http://wizards-of-os.org

Scope General

Topic Government

Type talk

Abstract Free software on the server end of an IT infrastructure is quite common in Germany. What makes the LiMux project stand out is that the Bavarian capital Munich (1.3 million inhabitants) will migrate 14,000 PCs and laptops of its public employees to non-proprietary software. While this is not an economically large or particularly technically complex undertaking, it is the largest deployment of GNU/Linux and OpenOffice in the public sector so far, and this symbolic value turned it into one of the world’s highest profile migration projects. Like the fall of the Berlin Wall, LiMux signals to public and private decision makers around the world that life beyond the existing order is possible.

Pre-requisites No knowledge required, just interest in public sector migrations.

Profile Volker Grassmuck is a media researcher at the Helmholtz Center for Cultural Technology of Humboldt University Berlin. His main area of interest is the digital revolution, intellectual property and free knowledge. Previous areas of research include artificial intelligence, garbage, the history of media and identity discourses in Japan, and the knowledge order of digital media. He is also the project lead of iRights.info and of the conference series "Wizards of OS", a freelance writer and an activist. As co-initiator of privatkopie.net he is campaigning to promote user rights and freedoms in the ongoing copyright reforms. His publications include "Freie Software zwischen Privat- und Gemeineigentum," Bundeszentrale fuer politische Bildung, Bonn 2002.