Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Paris Accelerates Move to Open Source

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the free-seems-to-motivate-a-lot-of-people dept.

* * 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"

11 of 225 comments (clear)

  1. Employees don't see cost savings by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Employees don't see cost savings, so they need to see feature benefits. Hard to tell if there are enough new or better features to justify the the move.

    1. Re:Employees don't see cost savings by Mistshadow2k4 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      If they were using Office XP and switched to OO.o 2 I know well from personal experience that the employees will see the benefits, especially in Word vs. Writer. Writer can export a document as a pdf without needing a 3rd-party macro or a program you use as a printer, plus it's FAR more stable. Writer's UI is better organized as well, IMO.

      FF vs. IE? You gotta kidding me. More stable, more features, blocks pop-ups by default, etc.

      One problem, though and I've mentioned this before; there's no open souce alternative to Acrobat Pro. Not even plans for one that I know of. That really sucks; we need Adobe-free computers, what with their exorbitant costs, product activation, and so on.

      --
      I dream of a better world... one in which chickens can cross roads without their motives being questioned.
    2. Re:Employees don't see cost savings by NineNine · · Score: 2, Interesting

      One problem, though and I've mentioned this before; there's no open souce alternative to Acrobat Pro. Not even plans for one that I know of. That really sucks; we need Adobe-free computers, what with their exorbitant costs, product activation, and so on.

      Why not do what we did: make your office PDF free? I hate PDF's with every fiber of my being. The files are enormous, the readers are bloated (and at 56+ Meg just to open a fucking file, I'd call "bloated" generous), and they're a pain in the ass to alter.

      Could somebody please tell me why people use PDF's in the first place?

      I feel like if at this stage, enough people said "NO" to PDF's, then it would just die on the vine. Right now, if any of our vendors send a PDF, I bounce it back with a message that we don't use PDF's, and it has yet to be a problem.

  2. Itchy and Scratchy. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    "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."

    So basically they moved from the whims of closed-source suppliers, to the itches of open-source suppliers.

  3. Re:Changing one monopoly for the other by marsperson · · Score: 2, Interesting

    You are probably right in the sense that they will find it necessary to have some consultant firm help them out, but using open source software probably protects them from being so dependent on one firm.

  4. France is evil by SebNukem · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Yeah! Another post related to France. I can't wait for the flow of rioting cheese eating surrender monkey hate posts to follow. Boycott France, United we stand and God bless america.

    The French Scapegoat http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2005/10/19/193648/40

    (Score 5: Offtopic.)

  5. Not only that by HawkingMattress · · Score: 4, Interesting

    My sister in law is student in "teacher's school" (no idea how you call that in english) in france.
    She'll be a teacher in primary school next year. They have computer courses to be able to teach children how to use a word processor, web browser or graphic editor. What's interesting is that they learn everything on free software, are given a cd full of OSS (for Windows), and encouraged to distribute it around them.
    They're told not to use commercial software with children, simply because their parents are not necessary wealthy enough to pay for the stuff at home so it would create ineqalities among the children. Very good idea if you ask me. Now if they could make a program to build very cheap computers and give one to each child it would be even better. But that's a start.

  6. France's use of Open Source by David+Off · · Score: 2, Interesting

    No I do not think it is the largest. For example by the end of 2005 the 70,000 workstations used by the French Gendarmerie will use Open Office. This is the biggest French migration. The Gendamerie hope to save 2 million euros per year. 10,000 computers bought since 2004 will have OO preinstalled. The Gendarmerie say this saves 75 euros per PC for an MS Office license.

    The Gendarmerie say it is not just a simple question of money. Managing Microsofts complicated license structure was becoming a nightmare for the Gendarmerie - reason alone for the migration.

    The Gendarmerie is also redevloping in Java a number of standard VB macros written for word to automate form filling. The idea is to leave open a possible future migration to Linux. XML will be used as a storage format along with PDF and open document formats. Stephane Kimmerlin for MS France says it is not a victory for OO, the Gendarmerie only used a fraction of MS Office's features so didn't really need the power offered by MS Office.

    In France the interior ministry will move 50,000 workstations to Open Office, the finance ministry is moving 8,000 PCs to OO, the public works ministry is looking to move 60,000 PCs to OO and Customs have migrated 16,000 PCs to OO and its use is mandatory since January 2005.

    Hope that proves useful.

    David

    ps I've consulted for the French Education ministry for their Antares project - a Java based system for managing recruitment which used JBoss and also Weblogic.

  7. Re:Poor kiddies by HairyCanary · · Score: 2, Interesting

    How does installing OpenOffice have anything to do with learning how to use Microsoft Windows? I was ASSuming they were just migrating from Microsoft OFFICE to OpenOffice, not from Windows to Linux, and Office to OpenOffice.

  8. Re:[grin] by lakiolen · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The proper term is "Frenched Fries (notice the ed)". Refering to the way that the potatoes are cut, specifically cut into long thin strips. So the potatoes were frenched then fried, hence, frenched fries. Then throughout the years, english speakers (British, American, Australian, etc.) being as lazy as they are, dropped a syllable and they became french fries.

    --


    What are you expecting to find here?
  9. Re:[grin] by Spoing · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Of course, the whole "french fries" fiasco was even funnier considering that french fries aren't even named after France - it's the way they're prepared that gave them their name, and the word just happens to be the same in (contemporary?) English.

    The Belgians -- and quite a few French -- consider that Belgium is the source of the friet.

    (I was asked years ago to make sure people knew this...and I keep my word.)

    --
    A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.