Steve Ballmer tried to prevent Munich from moving to Linux

Munich, Germany city, it's not only one of the largest cities in Europe, but is also one of the first cities which had decided to abandon the Windows operating system, and the transfer of all the computers to the Linux system, in a large project with more than 15 thousand computers.

The plan of this migration, has begun since the last decade, and that the transition to a distribution called LiMux distribution official in the city of Munich; has served as evidence that open source products are able to replace the Microsoft products.

In spite of this, however, that this is faced considerable opposition, not only from internal officials, but also by organizations abroad, claiming that the move to open source may not be a successful investment.

Perhaps one of the biggest opponents, he was the "Steve Ballmer" (Executive Director of the above Microsoft Corporation), who is responsible for Microsoft's business in the city of Munich, when he decided to dispense with Windows.

An article which was published on opensource.com website, and citing information provided by the "Peter Hoffman," the head of the project LiMux, the Steve Ballmer himself decided to travel to Munich to discuss the mayor to convince him using Microsoft software instead of open source.

- Hoffman says:

Steve Ballmer has tried to convince the mayor that it would be a bad decision if you go to open source, it is difficult to manage and adopt it. 

But some members of the City Council gave him a strong response, saying :

How a person thinks, even if he is from a giant company, could have come here and simply, believing that he could change our decision?! 

What happened after that, was very funny, especially in the skills of Palmer in negotiation; Hoffman adds:

He was president of our municipality is prepared to hold a meeting with Steve Ballmer, and because English is not his native language, he asked the translator "What I'm saying if you do not have the right words to say to him?"; Replied the interpreter: "Be quiet, and after finishing his talk, little thought then say, "what can you offer us is not it?" and then during the meeting, the head of our municipality has nothing to say to Palmer, except to repeat the words, "what can you offer us is not it?" several times, and years later, Palmer has deeply impressed by the extent of the difficulties faced in the negotiations. "

In the end, Munich decided to turn to the Linux, and Microsoft has lost one of the most important battles in history; it is clear to us now evident that Munich is perfectly fine without Microsoft products.

[softpedia]