Robert Pogson

SJVN has it right when he observes that M$’s exclusions of non-M$ software in “8″ will be just another reason to avoid the platform both as developers and users of software. M$ had a monopoly on DOS which they leveraged into a monopoly on the GUI by encouraging anyone and everyone to write for that other OS. Preventing people from writing for “8″ on ARM will make monopoly on that architecture stillborn.

see SJVN – ZDnet – Is Microsoft blocking Chrome and Firefox from native Windows RT a big deal?

Germany has had a lot of experience with different local governments and departments migrating to FLOSS applications and/or GNU/Linux. They have set up an office to provide information so that the wheel does not have to be reinvented for each migration. You can read their latest study of migration for the City of Dortmund:
Google’s Translation:“Open source software is the foundation for a company in the software without any legal obstacles that can be exchanged freely. This is the best framework provides for the innovative development of software because it can not be processed by only one provider, but by the entire scientific community and updated. was to move away from the proprietary software industry, means a municipality vendor-neutral, market-independent, flexible and cost effective to act. Moreover, this is the only way IT -supported management processes to make fully understandable and thus deserve the democratic ideal of transparency towards the citizens. The decision in the long term management well with open source planning software provides the opportunity to strengthen local partnerships, as open source software be exchanged between the local authorities at no additional cost. An example is shown in the city of Dortmund that begin municipalities must disentangle themselves from proprietary software and open source software provide targeted support to ensure the long-term benefits of open source software inherent to the to use. This is a necessary organization adapted to the particular open source software strategy to use for unrecognized opportunities. Author: Christian Nähle, employees of the City of Dortmund”

see Open Source Software im geschäftskritischen Einsatz bei der Stadt Dortmund (Open source software in mission-critical applications in the city of Dortmund)

It’s a difficult read from the translation but the gist is that everything is possible and the sooner Dortmund shifts to open standards and FLOSS applications the better.

I agree with that. One can look for difficulties with migration and one will find them but they are all soluble one way or another. I recommend Debian GNU/Linux for Dortmund or anyone else who wants an IT system that’s a cooperative product of the world, independent of individual suppliers and sufficiently flexible for any task.