French Military Contributes To Thunderbird 3

fredboboss sends news about Mozilla's email client Thunderbird 3, whose release we noted last week. "Thunderbird 3 contains code from the French military, which decided the open source product was more secure than Microsoft's rival Outlook. The French government is beginning to move to other open source software, including Linux instead of Windows and OpenOffice instead of Microsoft Office. Thunderbird 3 used some of the code from TrustedBird, a generalized and co-branded version of Thunderbird with security extensions built by the French military."

Comments

It's over... it's all over

[Anonymous Coward]

Thunderbird just surrendered to Outlook on my computer. Now it's even helping Outlook import old messages.

Re:It's over... it's all over

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow... really? A whole thread of bashing the French? Are you really that pathetic?

Re:It's over... it's all over

[OeLeWaPpErKe]

But the main issue was the effort to preserve the peace, the effort to acceed to the "reasonable demands" of the "champion of the poor" (that would be Adolf Hitler).

Just to show you how desperate (and mind-boggingly naive and stupid) the attempts to "make peace" with Nazi Germany were. Here's the story of the start of WWII, according to wikipedia :

On 30 August the Polish Navy sent its destroyer flotilla to Britain, executing Operation Peking. On the same day, Marshal of Poland Edward Rydz-migy announced the mobilization of Polish troops. However, he was pressured into revoking the order by the French, who apparently still hoped for a diplomatic settlement, failing to realize that the Germans were fully mobilized and concentrated at the Polish border. On 31 August 1939, Hitler ordered hostilities against Poland to start at 4:45 the next morning. Because of the prior stoppage, Poland managed to mobilize only 70% of its planned forces, and many units were still forming or moving to their designated frontline positions.

Just so you know, the exact event is that the French Foreign minister convinced the Polish ministry of defence to give a demobilization order, 1 hour and 15 minutes after Hitler's attack had started at full strength (after the switch from sabotage operations, false-flag attacks and covert operations into full-scale open warfare, Hitler had already been attacking Poland for weeks covertly, something the French knew). After the war it would be shown that the French foreign ministry was well-informed about the state of German troops, and while they didn't find out about the attack order until about 7 AM, they did not feel the need to inform Poland (again this was done "to preserve the peace", according to archives).

The French believed they could acquiesce to Hitler's demands, and thus avoid a conflict. The reasons are that they really, really did not want to fight. The reasons for that included that at that time, Hitler was the hero, both of French Nazi's and of the French lefties, including socialists and communists, and even (quite large) parts of "center" parties. With the center parties Hitler was mainly seen as a preferable alternative to communism. While the "rightist" party was not convinced, even they found the "alternative" to communism a compelling part of fascist ideology.

Those center politicians saw Hitler as someone who could bring social justice without bringing the well-known disaster that communism was. This was, however only a real argument in the center parties. He was (in 1940) not openly anti-capitalism, he just insisted on "controls" on management and ownership. He was not openly anti-religious (he even attempted to ally himself with the Pope, who refused, and allied himself with the muslim "caliph", who jumped at the chance, Aymin al Husseini of Jerusalem, who would later help him create the SS and the extermination camps, providing sites, food and troops. Yes one of the dirty secrets of WWII is that the islamic religious establishment created several extermination camps, in addition to providing logistical and even military troops to others. The muslims did this, knowing full well what the camps were for (or at least, the upper echelon knew)).

Because no-one fully realized what national socialism stood for, and what Hitler was capable of to achieve his "social justice" (that's what it was about for him). Hitler was not a good speaker, but he did realize one thing : a politician should make speaches that convey little meaning and not discuss policy or make clear statements under any circumstances, because if people don't know your ideology, it allows people who were mortal enemies (religious parties and communists, for example) to both vote for you. He pionieered the "victimhood rhetoric" that is so prevalent today, accusing any and all political opponents of "hating" the poor, muslims (yes

Re:It's over... it's all over

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. There is no reason to single out the French as cowards, or generally to attribute military skill to national character. Experience is what makes the difference. The difference in British performance in 1940 and in 1944 makes that very clear, I think.

Poland was occupied fairly quickly in 1939 by Germany and the Soviet Union because of the sheer military strength of the aggressors, even though soldiers at both sides were green and performed comparably. Contrary to the impression German propaganda has created, this was a trying experience for the German army.

In 1940, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France were overrun quickly one after the other by increasingly experienced German veterans. Most of these armies fought too short (or not at all in the case of Denmark) to have the time to absorb the lessons given by the Germans. Most individual soldiers and most army units never fought the Germans in more than one encounter. Importantly, the British in 1940 performed no better than the continental armies they cooperated with. In all armies there are cases of exemplary courage, and of units that fought above expectations, and cases of the opposite.

In 1941 the Germans overreach themselves by attacking the Soviet Union. In 1943 and 1944 the British and Americans open additional fronts by invading Italy and France; British are by now mostly considered veteran by their German opponents, while the American units are mostly green when first fielded. Because the balance of power now favors the Allies (more firepower, air superiority), green Allied units now do survive their first encounter without falling apart or surrendering and do gain experience fast.

The outcome of 1940 has little to do with courage and a lot with political choices in 1937-1939. I don't believe at all that the US, if it had been on the European continent, would have acted very differently.

Re:It's over... it's all over

[10Ghz]

The French believed they could acquiesce to Hitler's demands, and thus avoid a conflict. The reasons are that they really, really did not want to fight. The reasons for that included that at that time, Hitler was the hero, both of French Nazi's and of the French lefties, including socialists and communists, and even (quite large) parts of "center" parties

Cut the crap. The reason why France did not want to fight was because they fought an extremely bitter war with Germany few decades earlier and they hadn't yet recovered from it. To give you some scale: UK lost 2.19% of it's population in WW2. Germany lost 3.82%. France lost 4.29%. Not to mention the fact that the fighting in the West happened mostly on French soil.

But still they went to war. And they were defeated (together with UK) by the most powerful military force in the world. Should they feel ashamed by that? Hardly. Only thing that saved UK from the same fate was the Channel. And in the end it took the combined force of UK, USA, USSR, France and Canada to ultimately defeat Germany. Yet France is supposed to feel ashamed because Germany defeated them?

For comparison, USA lost whopping 0.13% of it's population in WW1.... In fact, USA has had it amazingly easy in it's wars. Look at Winter War. Had USA suffered similar casualties as Finland did, it would have meant losses of over 1 million men in a war that lasted 105 days.

It means a lot when Defense systems move over

[Kloplop321]

I would guess that it means a lot for a country's defense administration to move over to Open Source. I've never heard of TrustedBird before this, but it seems a WHOLE lot more secure than Outlook is. I use Thunderbird personally.

Re:It means a lot when Defense systems move over

[TapeCutter]

"trying to harden something that's very soft to start with"

French women have exceptional skills in that department.

French thunderbirds rock

[syousef]

Take a look at some of the footage of those French fighter jocks doing terrain avoidance at a few feet high. Incredible.

As for thunderbird the email program, I like some things about 3, and not others. I'm glad the devs allow you to switch the old toolbar back on. Much better than the Mozilla Firefox attitude of forcing you into changes you don't want to make.

I love this joke

[Anonymous Coward]

For sale: WW II era French rifle. Never used, only dropped once.

At Least...

[Nemyst]

At least some government agencies seem to understand that open source CAN be secure, stable and worthwhile. More power to them I say, they're quite forward-thinking on those matters it seems.

If only more could see that! With every new user, especially military organizations and government agencies, there are more bug fixes, more patches and more useful features added into the open source projects they use. That in turn makes the projects more appealing, more competitive and generally better, which closes the loop by enticing more to adopt it. We just need to get the ball rolling and, most importantly, to break old notions of open source being garage-geek-type material; I think we've seen all around us that we've evolved from that point.

Re:At Least...

[Brian Gordon]

I wouldn't mention OpenOffice while talking about how secure, stable, and worthwhile OSS can be. This is really only meaningful because people are starting to wake up and realize there are superior alternatives out there. But that doesn't apply to OO - OpenOffice is freer but it's not better. OpenOffice is a total mess of staggeringly bloated Java components. It's by far the most sluggish, memory-devouring application on my machine and integrates badly with my GTK theme. And there aren't any good ideas in OO, it's like someone bought Office 2003, made a list of features they saw, and tried to implement as many as possible throwing everything together without any kind of purpose or vision other than to take as much market share as possible away from MS office.

Gnumeric and AbiWord, on the other hand, are actually usable. The project knows what it wants, and continually refines toward that purpose, while OpenOffice scrambles to throw in new features every time someone discovers a use case that Office handles and they don't. A good sign that a project is maturing is when someone asks for a relevant feature that makes sense, and the project says no. I don't think openoffice has ever said no.

Re:At Least...

[JanneM]

"Gnumeric and AbiWord, on the other hand, are actually usable."

+1 on Gnumeric. It's the best spreadsheet app I've used (and I tend to use a lot of numerical and symbolic math stuff for work).

AbiWord, on the other hand, does have some potential, but they're still missing fundamental features like the ability to actually write using CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) scripts, something just about every other app of any kind out there can handle by now.

How About a Plain Text Mode?

[camperslo]

Doing away with all of the potential HTML, javascript, Java, Flash etc vulnerabilities by having a forced plain text only mode would sure help with security and privacy issues.

Re:How About a Plain Text Mode?

[gzipped_tar]

Use the about:config editor. Come on, you're a slashdotter and should know better.

Re:Well, at least we know it'll run well...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah the French suck, I mean they only liberated your country and all.. Wanker.

Open source software and govt's

[Andorin]

Score one for the French. Proprietary software does not belong on the computer systems of any significant (ie, state or national) government. Access to source code is necessary in order to ensure that secrets remain secret and the software is up to any custom tasks the government might require.

This is a letter written by a representative of Peru's government to a representative of Microsoft in 2002, explaining to MS exactly why the government feels that free software is necessary on their computers. Not only does it provide some insightful reasons as to why they're using FOSS, but you get a chance to laugh at the Microsoft rep's arguments. ;)

Re:Open source software and govt's

[John Hasler]

> Access to source code is necessary in order to ensure that secrets remain
> secret and the software is up to any custom tasks the government might
> require.

That is, unfortunately, not a strong argument for Free Software as governments (and other large organizations) often can and do purchase access to proprietary source code.

Continuing the naming tradition

[Rising Ape]

TraceMonkey, SeaMonkey... SurrenderMonkey?

Re:Continuing the naming tradition

[Ihmhi]

CheeseEatingSurrenderMonkey

FTFY

France: going OSS like the rest of EU but better

[KlaasVaak]

The French Government really seem to get the hang of OSS every depeartment seems focused on using OSS like their entire justice department going ubuntu http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2009/03/french-police-saves-millions-of-euros-by-adopting-ubuntu.ars and unlike the Germans(+1 million failed projects) or Dutch(going Microsoft everywhere despite promises and even laws(!) to go open source) etc they actually seem to be making progress

Now let the Endless French Surrender jokes begin

[Phrogman]

If there is one thing that is certain in this world, its that if someone says "The French" or "France" within hearing of any US Citizen, the immediate response will be an endless string of "Surrender" or "SurrenderMonkey" Jokes.

Caveat: I am not French just to clarify that. I am (English) Canadian, and I don't even particularly like the French myself.

It gets awfully tiring to be reminded of just how fucking bigotted the US is in this way. You should get over yourselves already.
Yes, the French got their asses kicked in WWII, whatever. Any nation invaded by Germany at that time would have suffered the same fate (and many of them did). You got your asses kicked in Vietnam, even if you don't want to admit it. You pulled your forces out before anyone had to surrender of course.

All these jokes serve to accomplish is to remind me just how fucking ignorant, narrow minded, bigotted and offensive the US can be at times. They make you look like nothing more than a nation of assholes. Then you wonder why the peoples of many other nations find Americans offensive.

Of course none of you seem to have enough education or enough wit to recall that during the Napoleonic period, France was the most respected and feared nation on earth. They conquered pretty much all of Europe and it took the combined might of England, The Austro-Hungarian Empire, Prussia, Russia and others to eventually defeat them after 20 years of warfare. At that point in time the US couldn't even carry out a successful invasion of Canada, and we (as the British) burnt the White House in response.

I for one would like to see this fucking "meme" be laid to rest. It was always present but seems to have been resurrected when the French decided not to commit forces to the first Gulf War (because it wasn't authorized by the UN I believe).

Now, queue all the responses from people calling me a "liberal", "faggot", "commie", "pinko" etc, because I criticized the US (I am none of those things by the way). What I am, is tired of seeing US citizens act like a bunch of fucking ignorant assholes, and then wondering why people think they are a bunch of fucking ignorant assholes :P

Yes, yes I have met many very decent and nice Americans, they just don't seem to post in response to their fellow citizens offensive shit that crops up like this every few days.

Re:Now let the Endless French Surrender jokes begi

[wronskyMan]

Not going to call you a "liberal", "faggot", "commie", "pinko" etc but I will say you have a thin skin. There is a reason it's called a joke. Same reason we call Mac users gay and Southerners toothless.

Re:Now let the Endless French Surrender jokes begi

[moz25]

Well, you don't hear many jokes about Poland, The Netherlands or Belgium being invaded by the Germans. Perhaps the French history as a great nation and the cultural arrogance that comes from that makes them more of a valid target to joke about.

But with that said: the French were absolutely right about standing up to Bush against an unnecessary war. All they had to do was commit a symbolic number of troops to "fight" in some relatively peaceful outback region like other countries did. If only more people stood up to the false claims...

Now, years later, we know that the primary achievement of the whole Iraq war effort has been to transform their country from a secular dictatorship to a theocratic dictatorship. This at the mere cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, thousands of US military lives and tens of thousands of civilian lives.

So much for them Freedom Fries, eh...

Re:Now let the Endless French Surrender jokes begi

[Cassius Corodes]

Perhaps somewhat off-topic but I read somewhere that all this French = weak stuff started as allied propaganda to explain why the Nazis managed to beat such a powerful (and it was a world power at the time) country so easily. The thinking (according to this article or whatnot) was to keep up morale after such a disastrous outcome by essentially claiming that any other nation would have managed to fight them off but that the French are weak and gave up without a fight. Naturally the real reason was the blitzkrieg tactics combined with bypassing the majority of the French and English (they too where out in force as well) army by going thru the Ardennes (a forest region that the allies thought was not practical to pass thru). Its worth noting as well that every other European country attacked (including Russia at the start) pretty much collapsed under the blitzkrieg.

More secure than Outlook?

[magamiako1]

I fail to see how anything on their list of features provides any more security over what can be obtained with a properly configured Exchange/Outlook system.

Re:France: going OSS like the rest of EU but bette

[Anonymous Coward]

Being french and working with various agencies, I can give a few more information.

First, you should know that it's the military police (the gendarmerie) that switched to ubuntu, not the civilian police. The military have been using open source for years now and switching the gendarmerie is only one big step in a much bigger plan to move away from proprietary software. The justice department has not switched yet as far as I know.

On the civil departments side, there is a division (the DCSSI http://www.ssi.gouv.fr/archive/en/dcssi/index.html) that push for open source software and good practices in use by the government. All departments are ordered to follow those recommendations where it makes sense. They don't recommend to drop existing proprietary solutions unless it saves money. They do recommend new solutions to be open source though. It seems they changed their name again in the recent months though, but their mission statement remains the same: http://www.ssi.gouv.fr/site_rubrique88.html

Another impact this is having is the creation of various websites for public use. For example there is a website about computer security aimed to the general public: http://www.securite-informatique.gouv.fr/index.html

In the central government the move to open source is already well in progress. But I can't say it's the same nationwide, yet.

everyone hates the French

[Swampash]

They imposed ridiculous penalties on Germany after WW1 and allowed Germany to remilitarize, giving birth to Nazi Germany.

They defeated the British Army in the Revolutionary War and provided financial aid to the Continental Army, giving birth to the USA.

Basically the French are directly responsible for the two most hated nations in living memory.

Re:Now let the Endless French Surrender jokes begi

[Foobar of Borg]

Yeah, and you're an idiot. The biggest reason the French suck is because they had the right, the obligation, the duty, to prevent the Germans from building up their military after WWI, and they gave in, they failed, they surrendered. Every death in WWII, including millions of Jews and Russians, can be laid at the feet of the French for failing to live up to the terms of the Treaty of Versailles which gave them the right to march into Germany at any point they desired and smack them down. But the french were afraid, and thus were key to making WWII happen by their inaction.

[Patrick Stewart voice] Gods! What a moron! [/Patrick Stewart voice] If the French are to be blamed for anything after WWI, it is for being too *aggressive* against the Germans. They crippled the German economy with vengeful reparations. They invaded and occupied the Ruhr. If it hadn't been for the post-WWI aggression of the French, Adolph Hitler would most likely have remained a unknown, raving anti-Semite and an artistic and political failure.

Re:Now let the Endless French Surrender jokes begi

[royallthefourth]

Now, years later, we know that the primary achievement of the whole Iraq war effort has been to transform their country from a secular dictatorship to a theocratic dictatorship.

It's worth mentioning that most American foreign interventions before Iraq had been for the purpose of removing democratically elected politicians and replacing them with pro-US dictators. The missions don't always succeed, but the outcome is always disastrous for the inhabitants.

Next time a anyone mentions "liberating" a foreign country, think about the Philippines, Chile, Indonesia, El Salvador, Cuba, Nicaragua, Iran, Vietnam, Laos, Afghanistan, Guatemala, the Seminoles, and Haiti.
I've probably missed a few in there, but anyone with a grasp of US history with regard to foreign interventions should be quite skeptical of any claims of "liberation" or "promoting democracy" abroad.

Re:Now let the Endless French Surrender jokes begi

[mjwx]

But if you're going to make a joke, especially a derogatory joke (face it, the "French surrender" jokes are derogatory) at least make them original.

I, like the GP and most people with half a brain are sick of the same tired old "France surrenders, huh, huh" jokes trotted out when even so much as a croissant is referenced. I saw one about Thunderbird crashing whenever it receives a message from Germany and thought that it was semi original enough to justify a funny rating but for the most part such comments are uninspired, unfunny, tired old surrender jokes being trotted out time and time again which we've all heard before.

Maybe the comments are in jest, maybe someone has an anti-France agenda but if you do make derogatory comments in jest make sure they are funny, otherwise they just become annoying.

BTW, at least don't display an ignorance of history, the French resistance did far more harm to the Nazi's then the Vichy collaborators did good for the Nazi's. Much of the early war intel, including several parts of "Ultra" came from resistance fighters who risked their lives and families lives to get that intel.

Naaaah

[Max Littlemore]

The same people that make the surrender jokes will often make fun of their own nation just as quickly.

Yeah , but Americans are pretty fucked when it comes to derogatory jokes about them. Like how they are such pussies they can't even go to war unless they pick on a country that can't defend itself against air power - and even then pimply nerds do most of it by remote control.

The French surrendered against a kind of warfare that had only appeared very shortly before their invasion and then fought a very successful underground campaign against the aggressors, much like the Iraqis have done. Good on them. Beats a bunch of wusses that don't even have the balls to surrender properly to a bunch of midgets in black pajamas when they are licked, despite having all the jets, agent orange and napalm.

I too know plenty of decent Americans, but this vocal peanut gallery makes me sick, especially this anti-French bullshit. Even Kiwis don't generally hang the same level of shit on them. You guys go on and on because they won't join you in your international armed robbery? Good on them for having some balls, even if they are the stinky cheese ball variety.

Re:Now let the Endless French Surrender jokes begi

[mctk]

I shoved my head back up my ass when I found out that the Freedom Fries people were serious.

Jules & Vincent Vega

[breon.halling]

Jules: What do they call Thunderbird?
Vincent Vega: Thunderbird's Thunderbird, but they call it "le Thunderbird".
Jules: "Le Thunderbird"! Ha ha ha ha! What do they call Outlook?"
Vincent Vega: I dunno, I didn't use Windows.

Re:Now let the Endless French Surrender jokes begi

[coder111]

Russians did. Stalin at the time of invasion by Germany probably did have more army than french did (counting men and probably equipment). Suffered the same fate, mostly due to poor leadership (good military leaders were "cleansed"). It took a harsh winter and fetching Zhukov from a gulag to stop them near Moscow.

--Coder

Re:Now let the Endless French Surrender jokes begi

[jensend]

Not that I think the jokes about the French are generally either funny or anything other than counterproductive, but they don't spring from Americans being "ignorant, narrow minded, [or] bigoted." They spring from the fact that France basically has never come to terms with the reality of what happened in WWII (see "Paris se libere!"), the rabid anti-Americanism which de Gaulle exhibited, and the many ways in which France has done things which are not only to its allies' disadvantage but also to its own disadvantage- for no other reason than to try to stick it to the Americans (and sometimes the Brits). I think the Macmillan paraphrase from that article is relevant- "France, he said, had made peace with Germany, had forgiven Germany for the brutality of invasion and the humiliation of four years of occupation, but it could never - never - forgive the British and Americans for the liberation."

You can't really even make much of an attempt to joke about what happened to most of the countries Hitler invaded. But the French pride, arrogance, and rewriting of history have in the past made it easier for people to find jokes about the French to be palatable.