You are going to look pretty silly surrendering to this guy,Frenchy.
Posted on 06/18/2004 12:08:26 PM PDT by ShadowAce
PARIS (Reuters) - France's cash-strapped government is giving alternative software firms the chance to win state business from Microsoft in a pioneering drive to challenge the U.S. software giant in the public sector.
Civil service minister Renaud Dutreil told Reuters France wanted to use "open-source" software providers to resupply part of the almost one million state computers under a government cost-cutting drive designed to trim a bulging public deficit.
"We are not starting a war against Microsoft, or against American companies in the software sector," Dutreil said in an interview. But he added that Microsoft "must return to being one supplier to the state among others."
"The competition is open," he said. "My estimate is that we can cut the state software bill at least in half."
At stake, in the case of office suite software alone, is around 300 million euros ($362.5 million) worth of software to be introduced to state computers over three years. Savings on operating systems could be of a similar order, officials said.
France's conservative government is trying to cut costs as it seeks to rein in a public sector deficit which is set to bust the European Union limit of three percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2004 for the third year running.
Open-source software -- uncopyrighted software which has no license cost -- like Linux, OpenOffice, Mozilla, Apache, MySQL and Evolution -- was "very credible," Dutreil said.
Microsoft, which is appealing a European Union fine for breaching antitrust law, said it would seek to show the French government it could offer software at a competitive price.
"In fact, open-source software is not free. It is very expensive because it shifts the cost to maintenance, services, integration and training," Microsoft France chief Christophe Aulnette said.
Open-source software suppliers welcomed the news.
"This decision will allow us to increase our presence in France," said Jacques Le Marois, president of the French open-source software company MandrakeSoft.
"This will also help us sell our solutions to other governments," he said, adding that he believed the German, Israeli and Malasian governments also envisaged shifting to open-source software.
France's culture, agriculture and finance ministries had already signed deals with MandrakeSoft, the company said. ($1=.8275 Euro)
This is flat-out wrong. OSS is all copyrighted, and the GPL is based on the concept of copyright.
Microsoft/Linux Tech Ping
You are going to look pretty silly surrendering to this guy,Frenchy.
Ah the French are stupid. When we shipped machinery to them to use they wouold pull out ALL chips that were American made and replace them with "French equivalents". Of course the machine would not work then and we would get a nice big payout for replacing chip sets....The French are the most arrogant and stupid people on earth....(Are you listening John Kerry?)
I know, I just saw it with my own eyes! ;-)
I think this is great (as I write from a mozilla browser). I think France is out of line going after MS. But I hope the EU antitrust against microsoft blows up...with MS refusing tech support to the Eurinals. Massive cost to their economies. But a boost to the OS software movement.
Let the frogs be the ones to pay the first mover costs. I can use OSS because I know what I am doing. For a large non-tech savvy organization, I have no doubt it would quickly spin into a disaster. french disasters amuse me. Except for letting all their old folks die last summer...that one pissed me off.
Wanna be Penguified? Just holla!
Got root?
And as long as they "don't mess with Texan Lance Armstrong.
Nice... maybe this means that's one less language I have to localize for Visual Studio. Cool!
If the EU can do it why can't we? It looks like the French Gov. wants free money in form of a tax/fine.
If the EU can do it why can't we? It looks like the French Gov. wants free money in form of a tax/fine.
And everybody knows there are no such costs with Microsoft software. /sarcasm
Ah yes the ever productive Malaysian arm of France....clean room techniques are so well maintained....rofl
Hey racist, a lot of Americans have French ancestry.
Good luck to them in the face of the socialists in the EU. Similar thread:
Microsoft Loses Munich Contract for 14,000 Computers to Free Linux Program
I agree with your sarcasm, however, retraining everyone to use a new OS and new apps is going to be very expensive, to say the least.
However, with creative bookeeping, they can shift the cost from purchasing to employee training.
And the tools aren't very hard to learn. Evolution, for example, looks very similar to Outlook.
Think of what they'll save every year in per-seat license fees alone.
Sorry, some of us aren't convinced.
So it's "Mandrake" Linux, a French Product they're going to be using? And Mandrake gets all the free software they want from Red Hat, a US corporation, since Mandrake basically renamed "Red Hat" to "Mandrake", yet Red Hat never got paid. Isn't that how it works with Linux?
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