The French National Assembly is switching to open source in an effort to save money. Following the footsteps of the gendarmes and the Ministry of Culture, the French Parliament will now vote Linux over Windows. In this context, come June 2007, the PCs in French deputes offices will run Linux as an operating system in concert with various open source productivity software.

The French Parliament's vote is an important victory for Linux, as the open source operating system will find its way onto no less than 1,154 French parliamentary workstations. Text editor OpenOffice.org, Firefox browser and an open source email client will additionally be installed on the machines to complement Linux.

Parliament members Richard Cazenave and Bernard Carayon of the Union for a Popular Movement party are the initiators of this project. At the basis of the project is a study by technology services company Atos Origin. The conclusions of the Atos Origin's study were a viable argument for switching from Windows to Linux.

"The study showed that open-source software will from now on offer functionality adapted to the needs of MPs (members of parliament) and will allow us to make substantial savings despite the associated migration and training costs," explained the parliament.