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.

In other words

[Anonymous Coward]

They gave up with IE.

French Military Police Surrenders to Firefox

[Average_Joe_Sixpack]

Giant orange lizard seen marching under the Arch de Triumph

Is this a good thing or a bad thing?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's OSS but it's the French!! Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!! I'm torn, really I am.

Damn

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, now we know who the loser in the browser war will be.

Re:More surrender crap??

[general_re]

No worries, my friend - I'll mod them all up for you. ;)

Thunderbird's a fine choice... for vagrants...

[voice_of_all_reason]

they have moved over 100,000 personnel over to... Thunderbird

Whoa, France. I know that fancy wines are a little bit on the downside now, but surely you can find something a little fancier than the $2.99 bargain bin at the liquor store and isn't the sole inebriant of choice for Stephen King's hobos.

Re:100,000 personnel

[^Case^]

I'm not french, so take this with a grain of salt but: The Gendarmerie in France is used for a whole lot more than policing the military. When you go skiing in France and end up being a bit too noisy in your hotel it's the gendarmerie that shows up, politely asking you to tone it down - being 6 feet tall and 6 feet wide and wearing skimasks in the hotel of course - at least, that's how I remember them ;-)

Re:French Military Police Surrenders to Firefox

[TobyWong]

Joke older than dirt and even less funny than Ellen Degeneres spawns multiple instances in french-related slashdot article.

Film at 11.

Favorite quote

[c_fel]

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.

Fun to know that after all this time, I actually ran Thunderbird OS...

bureautique suite?

[zeuqsav]

I like the way they have a specialized "bureautique suite", for generating red tape!

70.000 switchers

[Life700MB]

Woah, I hope they all use my "Spread Firefox" referrer button!


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Superb hosting [tinyurl.com] 2400MB Storage, 120GB bandwidth, ssh, $7.95

This after making file sharing legal?

[Ruff_ilb]

Vive la france!

Re:More surrender crap??

[gabraham]

You surrendered your points when you posted a comment.

Re:In Other News, Ballmer...

[masklinn]

In other news, Steve Ballmer has vowed to Fucking Kill(TM) the French military police.

Re:French Military Police Surrenders to Firefox

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

Fire ze fox!

But I am le tired.

Okay, take a nap, and then fire ze fox!

--

Voltaire once said that the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor roman, nor an empire. Could we say that Firefox was neither Firebird, nor Phoenix, nor....

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Let them eat cookies.

--

It was the best of browsers, it was the worst of browsers, it was the age of compliance, it was the age of popups, it was the era of ACID success, it was the era of ACID 2 failure, it was the summer of CSS, it was the winter of <blink>....

--

At least they didn't contract Apple to create the iFel Tower -- it would be made of white plastic, be the smallest thing in the city, and charge 99 francs admission to everyone.

Re:In Soviet Russia

[PFI_Optix]

Nyet. In Soviet Russia, you surrender to the French.

That'd be a welcome change.

(I couldn't resist)

FireFox

[certel]

Definitely a good win again for FireFox. Microsoft better be focusing on launching something respectful with IE 7. (Did I say Microsoft and respectful in the same sentence? Damn!)

WTF? Who did I piss off?

[mmell]

50% insightful, 30% overrated, 20% flamebait.

I'm guessing that 30% of the moderators work for Microsoft and 20% of them are French.

Re:Why the switch?

[IdleTime]

I wonder if people are "Freedom kissing" too?

Re:Why the switch?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh...Dude. France IS a bunch of cheese eating surrender monkeys

Haven't you ever used google images?

Re:In Other News, Ballmer...

[ToasterofDOOM]

Sorry, really, we surrender! Please don't Fucking Kill(TM) us!!!

Re:WWII

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Well, we spent a lot of time and money building a super weapon to take out germany. We called it the Atomic Bomb. Perhaps you've heard of it.

Re:Why the switch?

[Joey7F]

Probably, but they aren't reading these comments ;)

--Joey