Prime Minister to French Government: Favor FOSS Wherever Possible 112
concertina226 writes with interesting news from France. From the article: "French government agencies could become more active participants in Free Software projects, under an action plan sent by Prime Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault in a letter to ministers (PDF, and in French of course), while software giants Microsoft and Oracle might lose out as the government pushes Free Software such as LibreOffice or PostgreSQL in some areas. ... He also wants them to reinvest between 5 percent and 10 percent of the money they save through not paying for proprietary software licenses, spending it instead on contributing to the development of the free software. The administration already submits patches and bug fixes for the applications it uses, but Ayrault wants to go beyond that, contributing to or paying for the addition of new functionality to the software."
Re:FOSS Visual Studio (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft has refused to implement essential features from C99 that exist in nearly every other C compiler. Don't try to claim that Visual Studio is advanced software.
Example: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/zb1574zs(v=VS.100).aspx [microsoft.com]
Re:FOSS Visual Studio (Score:5, Insightful)
Two things:
1) "Wherever Possible" means that they know FOSS doesn't have a solution to every little problem. However, if it comes down to word processors, databases, web browsers, etc then there are numerous FOSS alternatives.
2) Visual Studio is great for MS languages like VB.NET but I find it lacking for C++ or PHP, which I use different IDEs for. It's like saying a full-size pickup truck is the absolute best vehicle out there. Sure, it's great for a lot of tasks but I wouldn't want to use it for long distance commutes, cross-country travel, navigating narrow city streets...
Très Cool! (Score:4, Insightful)
This is so awesome. Imagine if all governments did this. Since they all use the same applications (like LibreOffice) there will be tons of development $$$ per application!!
"He also wants them to reinvest between 5 percent and 10 percent of the money they save through not paying for proprietary software licenses, spending it instead on contributing to the development of the free software."