The French always seem intent on doing things their own way. This spirit of independence has led to major cultural contributions in the past: the nouvelle vague and French Existential movement in particular come to mind. Well, that spirit appears to be alive and well as the French government has decided to take a vanguard role in adopting open-source software. Along with the Ministries of Culture and Communication (who have already made the switch), the French Parliament will transition to using open-source operating systems and productivity software this year. According to the plan, 1154 French parliamentary workstations will run Linux, OpenOffice productivity software, Firefox and an as yet to be determined open-source email client. The Linux distribution that the MPs will use also remains a mystery at this point. This is a huge deployment for open-source and if successful, could prove Linux's viability in a large government environment.

For more on the old switcheroo Francais:
- see this ZDnet article