Outreach to local governments considering Linux

[Dan Kegel]

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 at 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

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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)
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