In 2003 the impending end of Microsoft's support for Windows NT 4.0 led Munich City Council to commission a report on choices for a successor for use on its office computers. The report yielded two main alternatives, either migration to
Windows XP or a move to a free and open source operating system based on Linux with an accompanying emphasis on web browsers as OS-neutral application clients. A majority of Council members voted for the Linux-based solution, which was dubbed LiMux, referencing the M on Munich vehicle registrations and MUC, the code of International Air Transport Association (IATA) for
Munich airport. On 16 May 2007, the TÜV confirmed by a comprehensive certification process, the usability of the LiMux-based client as a user interface for interactive computer systems according to the ISO standard 9241–110. The migration was interrupted in the summer of 2004, because the city wanted to investigate the legal implications of
software patents. In late 2006, the actual migration began. A tool called Wollmux was developed to extend OpenOffice capabilities in areas required by Munich Council, including managing consistent letterheads, form templates, saved blocks of standard text, document versioning and merging. Wollmux was released in May 2008. In May 2009, 1800 workstations were converted to Linux, and 12,000 received OpenOffice. By October 2013, the city of Munich had migrated over 15,000 desktop PCs (of about 18,000 desktops) to Linux and OpenOffice.org. The usability project group interviewed users regularly to achieve a good fit to the needs. In 2014, Munich deputy mayor, Josef Schmid, and mayor,
Dieter Reiter, considered going back to Windows due to alleged productivity problems. However, Stefan Hauf, the spokesman of the Munich city council stated that the majority of issues stem from compatibility issues in
OpenOffice, something which could be solved by switching to
LibreOffice. Moreover, the head of municipal IT services, Karl-Heinz Schneider, stated that most things were fine, and they had managed saved some 10 million euros (more than 13 million dollars). He emphasized that the number of complaints and malfunctions had not exceeded the usual level for an organization of this size. Microsoft had announced in 2013 its willingness to move its German headquarters to Munich in 2016, which according to Reiter though, is unrelated to the criticism they've presented against the LiMux project. In November 2017 Munich city council decided to revert to Windows by 2020 with all systems being replaced by Windows 10 counterparts. Some of the reasons cited were adoption and users being unhappy with the lack of software available for Linux. A report commissioned by Munich and undertaken by
Accenture, found the most important issues were organizational. In 2018, journalistic group
Investigate Europe released a video documentary via German public television network
ARD that claimed that the majority of city workers were satisfied with the operating system, with council members insinuating that the reversal was a personally motivated decision by mayor Dieter Reiter. Reiter denied that he had initiated the reversal in gratitude for
Microsoft moving its German headquarters from
Unterschleißheim back to Munich. In May 2020, the recently elected coalition administration, formed by Green party and the Social Democrats, decided that "Where it is technologically and financially possible", the city will emphasize use on open standards and free open-source licensed software. In October 2024, the City Government doubled down on this decision by implementing a five-point open-source plan, as well as, founding an Open Source Program Office. 200,000 Euros have been allocated to the OSPO for short-term positions of both municipal employees and external programmers. ==Objectives==