Munich is renewing its commitment to open-source software, but it is not bringing back LiMux, the city’s Linux desktop system. Instead, it is replacing proprietary software in parts of its IT infrastructure where open alternatives offer practical benefits.
At the Open Source Summit Europe, Munich’s chief digital officer, Laura Dornheim, said the city’s earlier move away from Linux was driven by politics, not technical failure. “Open source in the public sector doesn’t fail because of technical issues,” she said. “It mostly fails because it’s not aligned with the political agenda.”
Munich is now replacing VMware with Proxmox, Jira and Confluence with OpenProject and XWiki, and Oracle databases with PostgreSQL. The infrastructure and collaboration migrations are expected to save the city about €1.5 million or more each year.
Munich’s first open-source push began in 2003, when the city council voted to adopt LiMux, a custom Linux distribution. The rollout gathered pace in 2006, and by 2013 more than 14,800 desktops were running the system. A European Commission case study estimated that moving away from Windows saved roughly €11 million.
After a change in the city’s political leadership, Munich voted in 2017 to return its computers to Windows. The office software transition took longer, with the move from LibreOffice to Microsoft Office completed in 2023.
Dornheim said the reversal followed a political shift, including an agreement for Microsoft Germany to establish its headquarters in Munich. The experience, she argued, showed that a technically viable open-source project also needs lasting political backing.
The city’s current strategy avoids a single, administration-wide operating-system switch. Instead, it targets individual proprietary platforms when open-source options can reduce costs, improve control, or meet public-sector needs.
Munich’s approach also includes the principle of “public money, public code”: software developed with public funding should, where appropriate, be available for others to inspect, use, and improve.
The city established an Open Source Program Office in 2024 to coordinate this work. Its software portal outlines three priorities: adopt existing open-source tools, improve them, and publish software developed by the city.
Examples include DAVe, a traffic-data analysis application used in Munich since 2021 and adopted by Wolfsburg, and MUCGPT, which gives city employees access to large language models for tasks such as drafting and proofreading emails.
Munich also runs an Open Source Sabbatical program to support developers working on open-source projects. Dornheim says municipalities should have a more organized way to find and reuse one another’s software, rather than relying on chance discoveries.
The city’s renewed open-source effort is therefore broader than a return to Linux desktops. It focuses on reducing dependence on proprietary systems, managing costs, and making publicly funded software useful to other public institutions.
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