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French Military Police Switches to Firefox
Oslo_the_CKC writes to tell us that French Magazine Linux Pratique recently published an interview with General Brachet of the Gendarmie Nationale. In the interview he discusses why they have moved over 100,000 personnel over to Firefox and Thunderbird (70,000 and 45,000 respectively). This follows on last year's switch to OpenOffice.org so it seems like the French Military Police are enjoying the success of open source.
Linux Pratique: What are the most important features of Firefox 1.5?
Général Brachet: These features are independent of the version number. The most important things about Firefox are its compliance with W3C standards and its availability on several platforms (Microsoft, Linux and Mac). When the Gendarmerie will deliver application on-line to homeland security organisations and, in the future, to citizens, it will not request the users to use any particular platform or piece of software from specific vendors. Using Firefox or any other Web-standards-compliant browser will be requested, independently of the platform (...)
Linux Pratique : How many seats are going to be deployed, and how long will it take?
Général Brachet : Starting January 1st, 2006, Firefox will be the browser of choice for the Gendarmerie. (...) This migration will impact every PC connected to the Intranet and the Internet, totalling 70,000 seats, before the end of the year 2006. Most of the Web services will be W3C-compliant by then. (...)
Linux Pratique : OpenOffice.org (last year), now Firefox, when will you swich to Linux?
Général Brachet : Thunderbird will be deployed as the only mail client on 45,000 seat in 2006. The idea is to provide every unit with a workstation and have it used daily. Every Gendarme will have four tools at his disposal: a bureautique suite, for writing documents and doing procedural work, a browser to access the Information Systems, a mail client to communicate and an antivirus. Our first goal is to migrate all the upper layers of the workstation to Open Source Software to be independent of the Operating System.(...)
It's a great pleasure to see this important project being finally revealed to the general public, and to see Gendarmerie Nationale understand the importance of Open Source Software and Web standards. It uses them, and even gives back some code the the community, while telling the world about it. If I had a wish for 2006, it would be to see large users do the same, and tell publicly that they use Open Source projects. For them, it would be a way to give back to these projects something they really need: visibility.
but ferreal... who cares?
The more bricks that start falling out of the Microsoft monopoly will encourage extra bricks to fall and might take the entire wall down after some time. Don't forget street credibility! Every small step in the right direction is a small step in the right direction...
Dependency hell? =>
For Christ's Sake.
20 comments - the majority of which are 'French surrender' jokes.
1) Some originality would be nice.
2) I thought 2006 was the year the American public would wake up to the way they're manipulated (can you remember having the same contempt for the french prior to their [justified] opposition to Iraq II?)
3) Leave the french-hatred to countries that have a reason to hate the french. Like New Zealand or just about anywhere in the South Pacific
4) Some originality would be nice. Every time there's a French story, its like reading fark.
5) Please see points 1 and 5.
My pics.
This has been a test. Had this been a real emergency, we would have fled in terror and you would not have been informed.
...Our first goal is to migrate all the upper layers of the workstation to Open Source Software to be independent of the Operating System.(...)
To me, this was the single most interesting line in the entire article. Telling everyone that they must migrate to another operating system in one big step is bound to meet resistance and hassles. Instead they get people familiar with their day-to-day software tools, so that migrating to Linux/OSX/whatever later is largely irrelevant. If people's word processor and email system are still the same, they won't much care what OS is running.
With this strategy Windows loses its special status and becomes just a commodity, providing only storage and network access. It also becomes replacable on a whim (or close to it).
A quote would be:
Note the omission marks. Or more correctly
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
I'm guessing that 30% of the moderators work for Microsoft and 20% of them are French.
Read slashdot more often and read the comments please. Comments in this previous story say that this isn't the department of Culture who said it, but the SACEM (the French equivalent to the RIAA). And another, more recent story (I don't care about looking for it) says that this bill proposal has been heavily amended and turned into a legalisation of P2P and reverse-engineering for open source software among others.