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Munich, October 12, 2026 – The city of Munich is making a significant return to open source software, a move highlighted by Laura Dornheim, CDO and IT officer for the city, at the Open Source Summit Europe in Prague. This marks a new chapter after the well-known LiMux project of the 2000s.
The LiMux Legacy and its Reversal
The LiMux project, initiated in the early 2000s, aimed to replace Windows with open source alternatives. This decision was driven by the end of support for Windows NT 4.0 and a city resolution to favor open source software. The project, which took about 10 years to complete, successfully implemented Debian, KDE, and LibreOffice as core components of the city’s Linux-based system.
However, around 2014, political changes in the city council and Microsoft’s relocation of its German headquarters to Munich led to a shift in policy. In 2017, the city decided to revert to Windows, a process that was expected to be completed by 2020. Interestingly, the migration from LibreOffice to Microsoft Office was only finalized in 2023, taking a similar amount of time as the initial transition to open source.
A New Era for Open Source in Munich
Despite the setback, open source in Munich was far from over. Following another political change in 2020, a new resolution was passed to prioritize open source in software procurement,
