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Read This to see why.

The French public sector (much bigger in proportion than the US one) did contribute significantly to opensource software (for example, the first linux thread library and Ocaml has both been written by a French public sector researcher, Xavier Leroy, and you'll find thousands of other cases, like Frama-C.).

Also, French government did issue several contracts (outside of Gendarmerie) to support opensource software, and did pay development of significant applications. My perception is that the French government is supportive to open-source.

At last, French private sector is increasingly contributing to opensource projects (for example Penjili at EADS or Airbus).

Unfortunately, several French government sites are using proprieray (non-standard) technologies (like Flash at Assemblée Nationale - the lower Parlement Chamber).

The French non-profit APRIL association is quite powerful at lobbying for free software.

We have nothing to gain from funneling money into Microsoft's coffers.
But here are a few facts:
1. Sarkozy is best buds with the head of MS France
2. At the national std org (AFNOR) meeting, there was an overwhelming consensus towards voting "no"
3. The day before the final ISO vote, someone at the office of the president called our rep to the ISO
4. Our vote switched to "abstain", magically. This allowed OOXML to pass.

Corruption. There is no other word for it. It's interesting that Venezuela, Brasil, and Cuba voted, basically, against corruption. That should tell you something about what kind of "truth" we're being fed about those countries. (And no, hold your strawmen, I'm not implying that Castro is an angel.)

We asked for explanations about this vote; I don't think they even bothered to respond.

The French members of parliament are using Kubuntu: Feedback from French Members of Parliament Following the Migration of their Desktop Computers to Free Software

Wow, that article on the French is an evidence-free zone. The only actual French OSS project they mention is some middleware doodah that I've never even heard of. Trying to think of some myself... um:

1. Mandrake
2. ...er ...
3. ... that's it.

I'm sure there are others but none springs to mind.

Actually it's Mandriva. Using Mandrake is no more allowed, because of Mandrake the magician ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandriva_Linux#Name_changes )

Well Mandriva is just an example of software tagged "French" (not by Mandriva itself, but it's often referred as "French distro" or something).
As you guessed, we can find some other examples of software started by french people (videolan, Xfce, azureus, libcaca, sympa, frozen-bubble[2] etc.).

But is it important ? Is Mandriva really a French distro ? Mandriva now owns Conectiva (from Brazil) and Lycoris (from USA). So it's more 50% French, 25% US and 25% Brazilian. But wait it's using a kernel started by a Finnish guy, and a Desktop Environment born in (and still hugdely attached to) Germany...
You know were i'm heading. I don't think counting the number or "French OSS projects" is a good measure of how much France is involved or not in FLOSS. Perhaps we can find more valuables way to measure it. For instance by finding some projects where French people are really involved :

• Gnome :
  • http://www.gnome.org/~jdub/random/GnomeWorldWideHuge.jpg (I agree, we don't see much here. Just a bunch of points somewhere in West Europa)
• KDE :
  • http://worldwide.kde.org/pics/fullmap.jpeg
  • http://commit-digest.org/mappy/?view=2008-08-17&scheme=map_default&region=world&mode=embedded&standalone=no
• Debian
  • http://www.debian.org/devel/developers.loc (Same remark as Gnome)

We can also looks at studies and statistics :

• http://www.infonomics.nl/FLOSS/report/Final-2b.htm#_Toc14094379
• http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-9992379-16.html

This part was only about FLOSS development, we could also study FLOSS use or lots of different things. Well, i think my post is long enough already (sorry when i start, i just can't stop) so i won't cover all this. One last thing : I have no clue about other countries, but there is a lot of movement around FLOSS : Events :

• RMLL/LSM (Libre Software Meeting) : http://2008.rmll.info/?lang=en
• Paris Capitale du Libre (Paris http://en.paris-libre.org/index.php?option=com_frontpage&task=&id=0&Itemid=1
• Solutions Linux : http://www.solutionslinux.fr/
• FOSSDEM http://fosdem.org/ (That's true i lied again, it's not in France, but in Belgium. In Brussels, the French speaking part of Belgium)

There are also powerful Associations and usersgroups like April ( http://april.org/index.html.en )
Well April is Involved in so many things (promotion of FLOSS, lobyying, meetings with politics, action groups against tying, against treacherous computing, against software patents, against OOXML normalizat

As a member of April, the French free software association, I have been following this nonsense since it started. We have raised those issues already. W have been in touch with government officials, and this much is clear: they don't get it, because they don't care. The Sarkozy government is about as corrupt and authoritarian as the Bush administration, and similarly incompetent.
(Even Chirac, who didn't have the most spotless of records to say the least, had at least surrounded himself with competent and well meaning people.)
To illustrate this point, there's no better story than that of former member of parliament Cazenave. He was a member of Sarkozy's (and Chirac's) party, UMP, and one of free software's best advocate in the legislative branch. But before the last election, Sarkozy decided to give the party's nomination for that district instead to convicted felon Carignon. I shit you not. Carignon lost to the socialist candidate, in a district that had never voted left in decades.
Anyway, we have been in touch with members of several parliaments (assembly, senate, european), and have found strong allies. Former Prime Minister and current MEP Rocard for example was instrumental in defeating software patents in the European Parliament, and he voiced strong opposition to this current nonsense.
But we know how Sarkozy operates, he's learned from the worst, and, like Tom DeLay, he's going to strongarm his party's members in the legislative to toe the party line, even if they have reservations.

If you see any of these guys, you might want to be suspicious:

McCain (not a TX resident)
Obama (not a TX resident either)
Clinton (not a TX resident, pissed at both of above)
Ahmadinejad, Casto (either), Chavez, etc (not TX residents, but like to joke around with the US)
and of course anyone who looks like this:
http://www.april.org/association/documents/alan-cox-sticker-drm.jpg

It is funny the way the more things change the more they stay the same. This is precisely the same type of situation that prompted Richard Stallman to create the Free Software Foundation to begin with. One day the lab bought a new, more reliable printer from Xerox. Unfortunately, the source code of the printer driver was not included in the package, and they were unable to put in place the same kind of maintenance set-up they had used before. Richard Stallman later heard that another scientific laboratory had a copy of the source code of the Xerox driver. When he tried to obtain it, he was told that the lab had agreed to keep the source code to themseves and not to make it available to anyone else. ... Richard Stallman then decided to create the Free Software Foundation.

The point is the flexibility you gain in being able to alter the kernel of the OS on which you're running your programs. While BSD is of course a different, older tradition, recall that the reason RMS got into the whole "free uber alles" thing was because he wanted to have the source to a printer driver, not because he didn't want to have to pay for one.

This ability could actually improve Max OS X's adoption by the enterprise - companies will know that they won't have to depend upon Apple to make any desired changes to the OS.

Running mass-market programs on an open source OS (and not under some sort of abstracted emulation layer) is an important holy grail. It'd be good to see, but I wouldn't be surprised if Apple started playing games like using digital signatures to thwart (or at least impede) these efforts.

The prime source of information about software patents in Europe is the patents mailing list on the AFUL web site (french free unix user group).

Some information is also available on the APRIL web site (french association for research in free software).

In particular, to date, all the big (poll-wise) candidates to the french presidential election have expressed their opposition to software patents, see in french Haro sur les brevets and Tous les candidats dans l'opposition.

And of course the EuroLinux web site and FFII web site (Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure ) have links to a lot of ressources and interesting readings.

We, european citizens, are seeking ways to get other european countries take position against the current proposed european law that opens the gates of unrestricted software and ideas patenting.If you're willing to help the cause, please contact your local free software association and try to get some activism in place together with the established assiociations like the FSF Europe. If you are French or German you can even make a tax-deducible donation, it may help the cause too.

--
Laurent Guerby <guerby@acm.org>