14 DAY TRIAL // France is one the few countries in the European Union that have made a stand and decided that open source software is the best solution.
A guideline encouraging the use of open source software in France has been approved and signed by France's Prime Minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault.
This type of measure could ensure lower IT management costs, increased flexibility and competition. The public administration sector would be one of the first to benefit from this measure, most likely because costs for long-term maintenance would certainly go down.
“This is alsmost the coming-out of the government on free software. Free software already has a special place in the services of the state, but the official pronouncements were rarely as clear and committed as this one,” added Patrice Bertrand, chair of the French Free Software Council, a working enterprise composes of a lot of free software firms.
According to Gijs Hillenius, the one who posted the blog and the translation of the guideline on the European Commission Joinup website, these instructions were written by a group led by the department of inter-ministerial information systems and communication.