Mannheim aims to use programs that supports open standards. In other words, any software, whether closed source or open source, can use open standards. Local and national governments in some U.S. states, for example in Massachusetts, have been moving to standard file formats such as the OpenDocument format.  As a result, public documents won't be beholden to a specific proprietary program.

Gerd Armbruster, who is the IT infrastructure manager at the German city, said: "We want to decide our IT strategy in Mannheim, and not have Microsoft make the decision for Mannheim." Also, Gerd Armbruster added that The city's IT department shifted from Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 to Oracle Collaboration Suite because ODS supports open standards, even though it is proprietary software.

Moreover, the planned move to OpenOffice was similarly driven by the city's desire to use OpenDocument standards. In Mannheim's situation, the cost of the Linux shift was largely irrelevant as Armbruster said. Migration from  Microsoft Office 2000 to the 2003 version has costed approximately 1 million euros (about $1.18 million) in Mannheim. That's why, Gerd Armbruster added: "We never said to our mayor that if we switch to Linux, we won't need to pay 1 million euros to Microsoft."

The city has to spend a considerable amount for migrating desktop applications from Windows to Linux, although it will save some money by switching to open-source desktops. Also, migrating those applications will take time.    

Armbruster concluded that the migration to OpenOffice had to end when support for Office 2003 ended, so they had about four or five years to complete the migration.