Another goodbye to Microsoft? Munich is the latest to commit to open source

Munich’s new ruling coalition has signed an agreement committing to making open-source software the standard for municipal software procurement.

Munich, the capital of Germany’s state of Bavaria, has a long history of flirting with open source. The municipality began adopting LiMux, its customized Ubuntu-based Linux distribution, in 2006 to replace Windows.

Over a decade and 14,800 desktops running on LiMux later, the Munich city council decided to refit all equipment to Windows.

A new agreement by the freshly formed coalition places digital sovereignty at the center of administrative modernization, according to Heise.de.

The strategy based on the “Public Money, Public Code” principle states that software financed with tax revenue must be made available to the public in the future.

Therefore, the municipality is upgrading the Open-Source Program Office (OSPO), launched in 2024, to build IT infrastructure free from the constraints of proprietary providers. Instead, it will rely on interfaces and manufacturer-independent standards.

The new leadership argues that switching to open source will allow it to avoid expensive license fees and prevent vendor lock-ins.

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The commitment comes amid a broader European push towards digital sovereignty, driven by worsening relations with the Donald Trump administration.

The ​German government announced in March that all public-sector documents will be issued only in open formats, excluding Microsoft Word and other proprietary formats.

Germany’s state Schleswig-Holstein said in 2025 that 80% of state government workplaces had switched from Microsoft software to open-source alternatives.

Earlier in 2026, the French and Swiss governments announced plans to move away from Microsoft to open-source alternatives such as Linux.

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