Munich's WollMux will be free software

(29.05.2008) The software tool to manage the document templates and forms of Munich's administration (WollMux), which has been developed by the IT project LiMux, is released as free software today.

The WollMux supports the employees of the city administration in their daily business, especially in word processing. It provides the necessary personalized templates and forms and helps with comfort functions and plausibility checks within forms. For administrators, it offers convenient ways to maintain and provide the necessary templates.

Christine Strobl, Munich's mayor and principal of LiMux, sees benefits through the publication for Munich and other municipalities: „ WollMux as free software gives others the possibility to benefit from our development. In the same time we can benefit from enhancements done by others, especially by solving bugs making it more easy to use and enhancing the functionality. This win-win situation is one of the advantages of free software.“

The software is published under the European Union Public License (EUPL), which the European Commission designed as a free software license. It is derived from the GNU General Public License (GPL) and adjusted to european law. It grants the licensee the same copyleft rights like the american oriented GPL. The software is going to be published at the Open Source Observatory and Repository (OSOR), the upcoming EU platform for free software of public authorities. At the moment this platform is open for public testing, but the WollMux can be downloaded without problems.

Strobl welcomes the release: „We are increasingly using free software in Munich. The distribution of our software under a free license is a consequent step to improve openess and independence from special software vendors. It is our goal to release more software under free licenses in the future.“

The WollMux, further information and the weblink to OSOR can be found in the Internet at www.muenchen.de/wollmux.

About LiMux:
Munich's IT project LiMux increases the use of free software and open standards on the 14,000 desktop of the administration step by step. The LiMux base client, OpenOffice.org and more free software is in effective use for more than one year now. There are about 1.000 base client and about 8,000 OpenOffice.org installations right now.
Leading argument for the decision made by the city council in 2004 was the increase of vendor independence, the advancement of competition in the software market by increasing the opportunities for small und medium sized enterprises to take part and the opportunity to control Munich's IT costs in the mid term.

[115243]

E-Mail an limux@muenchen.de schicken