Paris Accelerates Move to Open Source

* * Beatles-Beatles writes to tell us that the city of Paris is moving to open-source software a little faster than originally intended. As a part of the strategy to 'reduce its dependence on suppliers' they anticipate replacing both server and desktop applications with free and open-source software. From the article: "Earlier this year, volunteers among the city's 46,000 staff were invited to download and install open-source software to their desktops, including the Firefox browser and the Open Office.org productivity suite. Now, the city is planning to migrate all the users of one city department or all of those in one of the city's 20 districts, not just the volunteers, to test a larger migration. The city has 17,000 workstations, up from 12,000 in 2001"

Comments

Freedom Fries were appropriately named.

[Anonymous Coward]

Good Job France -- seems that the French/Freedom fry equality is true - they really do stand for freedom.

Re:Freedom Fries were appropriately named.

[Total_Wimp]

You are really going to try to Karma Whore with likening it to real war where people are getting killed?

They wouldn't be if we had stopped to listened to the French. Hey, here's a bright idea, why don't we actually have a dialogue with our allies instead of pouring their wine down our gutters when they dare to disagree? It's just possible they may have a good point of two.

TW

Re:Freedom Fries were appropriately named.

[Total_Wimp]

Listening to someones does not mean agreeing with them. This is a common misconception of partisans everywhere.

I would have been quite happy with honest disagreement rather than demonizing the dissenter.

I know I'm way off topic here, but many of the biggest problems of this administration can be linked directly with building a climate where only yes-men are listened to. If you allow honest dissent then you get to see a much clearer picture of how things look, you gain advanced notice when things aren't going so well and you gain valuable insight into the flaws of your plan. If you don't listen to honest dissent then you voluntarily put blinders on, people become afraid to tell you about problems and you gain the false impression that your plan is perfect, even though it would be much better if you just tweaked a few things.

Even if you believe that the Iraq war was a good idea, which I do not, certainly you can see how doing a few things differently might have helped. Some people told Bush to take more troops. Some people gave Bush advice that more resources were necessary to rebuild Iraq when the war was done. Some people told Bush that we would face guerilla fighters after the war who would refuse to surrender. If Bush had listened to this dissent then he may have still prosecuted the war, but he would have done a better job of it. Less people would be dead, Iraq would be more stable and we'd be that much closer to bringing everyone home. Pouring out wine and renaming fries helped ensure that these dissenting views were marginalized and ignored. Frankly, it helped ensure in my mind that our president does not have the capacity to lead wisely.

TW

Re:liberté, eqalité, fraternité

[xutopia]

How is that modded to insightful?

France does not hate America and doesn't really care about the anglicization of the French language. Only a few really vocal conservatives care about anglicization and they go "shopping" and "park" their cars next to the "building".

Also your comment about a French version of Windows being poorly translated is false. It is very easy to have a completely French computer if all you install is French versions of the software you want. Mix and match your software and you could see Korean and Elbonian on your computer.

Please stop with that fallacy about France hating America. The only thing France hates about America is now at record lows in approval ratings. Seems you have more in common with the French than you might expect.

Ah but you forget Chirac's Gaullism!

[tjstork]

Chirac's opposition to the war is not really the French issue with we right wingers. Chirac using France and Europe as a counterpoint to American power is. In other words, Chirac sees France as the leader of an opposition to the United States simply for the sake of opposing it.

Chirac made numerous trips around the world decrying everything about American culture and as a consequence, the American people, and he's attempted to rally the world to his vision of France as the leader of a block standing against the American "threat". If he wants to view the USA as a threat, that's fine by him, but you can't honestly say France is a friend to the United States for painting us that way.

Thus, we on the right believe that to say the USA has alienated our "French ally" has missed the point. France is not our ally. She's a "friendly" rival because she wants to be, and I just don't see a reason why the United States needs to kiss up to France if France is going to be so petulant.