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French Government Recommends Standardizing on ODF

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the if-the-french-think-it's-a-good-idea dept.

Juha-Matti Laurio writes "From the InfoWorld article: All French government publications should be made available in OpenDocument Format (ODF), according to a report commissioned by the French prime minister. The new report also suggests that France ask its European partners to do likewise when exchanging documents at a European level. It is recommended that the government will fund a research center dedicated to open-source software security as well, adds the article."

2 of 210 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Breaking news from Paris by KutuluWare · · Score: 0, Flamebait
    The US hasn't won a single war where France wasn't fighting along their side.
    I'm not one for unsubstantiated France bashing, but that statement is one hell of a non squitur. Factually, it's MOSTLY correct. Arguably, we "won" the War if 1812, which France not only didn't fight with the US (Napoleon was kinda busy then), but partly caused the US to start in the first place. More to the point, one could just as easily make the same statement about Canada, Portugal, Belgium, and Australia; none of which have the same history of military loss as France. For whatever reason, France has found itself on the losing side of the majority of wars it gets itself involved in, and given the age of that country, there's been a lot. Their solution is quite freqently to concede, withdraw, or pay off their opponent to get the war over with. It's To an All American Patriot, that's surrender. To a French citizen, its probably considered "sane foreign policy that keeps our citizens alive and our cities in one piece in exchange for not fighting people we really don't give a crap about." It's all about perspective. In closing, to counter one non sequitur with another, for as long as there has been a US, France hasn't won a single war that the US didn't do most of their fighting, to wit: American Revolution, WWI, WWII, Desert Storm. There's a reason that the most famous French military unit is the French Foreign Legion. :)
  2. Oh those funny Europeans by 500HP · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    What exactly is the problem here? They want on Open Standard. Why? Nearly everyone already uses .DOC. If they don't like it why not author their own OS or Productivity Suite? Why not buy one from IBM or Sun or some Unix derivative. Ohhhh, that's right...they can't make it work as well as those authored by Microsoft. So, instead of innovating, they are going to litigate and legislate the hard working Americans in Redmond to GIVE IT TO THEM. That's so European...let's whine until somebody else does it for us.