Ballmer fails to get Munich agreement

THE SOFTLY spoken and quietly demure CEO of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer, has failed to persuade Munich to take the Windows route.

Instead the city has abandoned its old ally Microsoft and opted to join the Open Source axis by switching more than 14,000 PCs in the government network to Linux.

The project dubbed LiMux (Linux for Munich) will begin this year with the adoption of OpenOffice.org office suite and the Mozilla Web browser running on the jurisdiction's existing Windows NT desktops.

Ballmer, aware that Linux might make further territorial advances into the Redmond giant's territory, flew into Munich last year to meet with government officials to persuade them of the merit of his firm's claims.

But the visit and earnest chat failed to gain the piece of paper, or licensing agreement, that Steve wanted.

It has been a bad week for Ballmer. Already the citizens of Bergen, Norway, decided to deploy SuSE Linux from Novell for the city's server system.

Ballmer can console himself that such roll-outs, while big are a drop in the ocean for the Redmond giant.

According to IDC, Linux holds a tiny three per cent share of client operating-system shipments, with Windows at 96 per cent. µ