France Considers Open Source

joestar writes "Reuters today announced that the French Government is considering Open Source Software adoption as an excellent alternative to reduce their IT costs. A cost reduction of several hundred millions dollars is planned by replacing proprietary licenses by Open-Source solutions. 'Microsoft must return to being one supplier to the state among others', declared a government Minister. France's culture, agriculture and finance ministries had already signed deals with Mandrakesoft for first Linux deployment tests. After Munich's new move in Germany, it seems that Open Source Software is currently a major movement in old Europe."

Comments

Re:France Would Save More Costs

[JohnGrahamCumming]

if they scrapped their massive welfare state, their coddling of workers, and protectionism that hurts their citizens overall.

Switching to Open Source would be the least of the economic problems.

So how do you explain that France is a member of the G8, one of the largest economies in the world, a major player in aerospace (ever hear of Airbus or Ariane), major player in the oil industry, pharmaceuticals, an independent nuclear power, has a far better life expectancy than the US, lower obesity, a superb health-care system?

You roll out the old "big government" argument without considering the fact that France is not going the way of the Soviet Union, but is in fact a very healthy economy.

John.

Isn't it obvious?

[Three Headed Man]

All these countries are considering open source not so much because they may use it, but because they know they'll get some leverage against Microsoft. As soon as Linux was offered in Thailand, Windows cut prices on XP and office to $35. The best way to drive someone's price down is make them think they have to compete against a serious threat.

Re:Well, shoot.

[kfg]

There's always "Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite the Source," which is quite a mouthful, so we'll just call it "LEFtS" for short, but that might be a bit too Dantonesque for some.

KFG

Re:Ya know what Microsoft?

[thetoastman]

Hmmm, I suppose you've never looked at the cost of software maintenance, training, and software integration of Microsoft products.

Maintenence . . . . you have forced upgrades, required reboots (translates to downtime), and prohibitively expensive maintenance support costs.

Services . . . . I have yet to find Microsoft services capable of answering even the simplest of questions. For this I can pay a huge amount of money.

Integration . . . The key to any software integration project is the adherence to well-defined, published, and freely available standards. This is why the Internet works so well. This is why you can run SOAP and web services between competing vendors. This is why you can use XML-RPC and accomplish an amazing amount of integration. This is why EDI worked well in the transportation and distribution industry. This is one of the reasons OSI failed (standard costs were expensive).

The challenge with a Microsoft-centric solution is that it adheres to standards poorly if at all. And of course, like Cabletron (remember them, the networking company that eschewed standards for a proprietary management system) this will only be cost-effective in a single vendor solution.

Training costs for Microsoft are every bit as high as training costs for open source products. Many organizations don't train their users on Microsoft products, which is what Microsoft then uses as a training cost baseline.

If you have ever had to work with a reasonably complex Word document that someone else has created, you know what disaster this lack of training can be. Often it is easier to create a properly (?) structured Word document and paste in the contents rather than attempting to fix the original work.

In short, capital costs are lower, maintenance costs and schedules are business-driven instead of vendor-driven, services are better (would be difficult to be worse), integration is better, and training is a wash.

Another clear advantage with open source is that you can train your IS staff on principles and concepts instead of vendor-specifics. This means that when the next IT revolution hits, your staff will be in a position to take advantage of it.

It also means that your IS staff and business are insulated from capricious vendor changes that REQUIRE specialized and expensive training.

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Re:I think France got it

[saforrest]

Then there is world war deux, remember back to the afternoon of June 22, 1940. That whole armistice treaty you signed with germany to protect your collective french butts? Yeah, thanks for standing strong with us there.

Um, what the hell are you talking about?

First off, France had been invaded, its supposedly foolproof Maginot Line had been completely circumvented, and the population was fleeing before the German advance. Sure, they should have planned better, but at that point, what else was there to do? The later collaborationist actions of the Vichy government were dispicable, but to go on actively fighting would have been bloody ridiculous.

And 'standing strong with us'? You admit with the reference to the Revolutionary War that you're an American. So how hard were the Americans fighting against the Germans in 1940?

Oh, right. They weren't in until Pearl Harbor, a year and a half later. (In fact, Prescott Bush, whose last name you may find familiar, had his assets seized after the Americans entered the war because comparies in which he had an interest had funded Nazi Germany.)