Microsoft News Tracker

From the AFP:

Supporters of open sourcing for computers have been given a shot in the arm by news the French police are abandoning Microsoft’s Internet Explorer for the Mozilla Foundations browser Firefox.

The gendarmerie’s 70,000 desktops were being converted to Firefox and its email client Thunderbird because of the navigator’s “reliability, security and inter-operability with other state services,” said General Christian Brachet, IT director of the police force.

The move should be complete by the end of the year, he said, as enthusiasts of open sourcing wrapped up an annual meeting in Paris at the Solution Linux 2006 exhibition.

Firefox had been chosen because it was based on the W3C standard, an international norm for the Internet, and because it works equally well under Microsoft, Mac or Linux.

Last year they had switched all their desktops from Office to OpenOffice which is estimated saves them $2.4M a year. If you detect a pattern here, you’re right:

No decision has yet been taken to move from Windows to Linux, said Geraud, “but we’re considering the option.”

More by following the link including that many more parts of the French government are moving in the same direction.