French Police Ditching Windows for Linux

esocid writes "In another European blow to Microsoft the French paramilitary police force said Wednesday it is ditching Microsoft for the free Linux operating system, becoming one of the biggest administrations in the world to make the break. The gendarmerie began severing its ties with Microsoft in 2005 when it moved to open source office applications like word processing. It switched to open source Internet browsers in 2006."

Re:Better headline

[Creepy Crawler]

That's just getting stupid.

They only surrendered to the Germans for one real reason: their artwork and architecture. I really cant fault them for that, considering the pictures I've seen in the aftermath of England.

I also keep in mind that they also made our current word: sabotage... that words origin comes from Nazi occupation of France, when the peoples would jam up factories and machines to help Germany.

For what situation France got stuck in, I really cant blame them.

Re:Better headline

[Chris Mattern]

They only surrendered to the Germans for one real reason: their artwork and architecture.

They surrendered to the Germans because 1940s France was a bitterly divided nation with an ineffective government, and some political factions favored surrender over working with their political enemies (the Communists were strong in France at the time and operated as a fifth column, because of Stalin's alliance with Germany at the time--ironically, they would become some of the most effective of the Resistance later when Hitler invaded Russia), and also because of a strong strain of isolationism at the time--many Frenchmen in 1940 were actually convinced it was all Britain's fault, an opinion that was reinforced when the British bombed the French fleet at Mers-el-Kebir to prevent it from falling into German hands. The catastrophic military loss they suffered--the result of poor training, poor organization, poor leadership, and most of all, horrid communications (the French supreme HQ's picture of events was routinely several days behind what the front lines were seeing)--may have been the proximate cause, but the kind of disaster France suffered in 1940 takes a political and moral collapse as well as a military one. Read Shirer's "Fall of the Third Republic" sometime, fascinating read.

I also keep in mind that they also made our current word: sabotage... that words origin comes from Nazi occupation of France, when the peoples would jam up factories and machines to help Germany.

Um, no, it doesn't. While the Resistance in France certainly practiced sabotage, they didn't invent the word. The word comes from the French railway strike of 1910, in which the workers destroyed the wooden shoes that held the rails in place. The shoes in French were called "sabots", hence "sabotage".

Re:Linux does make sense.

[Pig Hogger]

The Police Agency if anything like in America are always on the border of huge funds or cutbacks.

Er, no. It is the french Gendarmerie, and they are part of the armed forces.

Yup, in France, the roads are patrolled by soldiers. And no one fucks with them, as well as by being soldiers, they don't fuck with anyone either, quite unlike the pityful police farces too often seen in the US.

Re:Better headline

[gweihir]

Actually ''sabotage' has no connection to the Germans. It suspected to have originated in a railway strike in 1910, were a part of the rails called a "Sabot" was removed to render the rails inoperable. An alternate (according rto Wikipedia unlikely) origin is that of throwing wooden shoes (also Sabot) into mecanizes looms to kill them. Again no connection to the Germans.

Re:Linux does make sense.

[AvitarX]

It's true.

Even in the nice areas there are stations that have people armed with assault rifles outside keeping watch.

For the record, it didn't make me feel safe.

Re:How about some donations?

[PHPfanboy]

They are, you just need to know how to take the donations :-) No point begging for it, that won't get through a Purchasing department.

France is a hotbed of open source activity. Loads of top companies are well LAMPed and this provides a good market for developers and university grads. On top of this, there are plenty of university courses with open source projects associated, like the very excellent VLC multimedia player (and server).

There are system integrator companies like Linagora who provide full service for Open Source to institutions like the Ministry of Finance http://www.linagora.com/societe/presse/articles_de_presse/ministere_de_l_economie_contrat_record_dans_les_logiciels_libres_-_le_monde_informatique_ar884.html [linagora.com]

Re:Linux does make sense.

[sxpert]

No the standard weapon for the french military forces is the french built Famas

see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FAMAS_(rifle) [wikipedia.org] for more information

the thing is very reliable and doesn't jam

Re:Better headline

[Chris Mattern]

Like a lot of "good story" etymologies, this one gets repeated a lot because it's such a good story, but isn't supported by the evidence. There are no known contemporary sources reporting the flinging of wooden shoes into machinery, nor is the word "sabotage" used in this way before 1910, whereas the supposed shoe-throwing would've happened in the mid-nineteenth century.