[ Thanks to Philip
Webb for this link. ]
“The story of how the French government became involved
with the open source movement, which has transformed much software
around the world from proprietary to free, goes back six years.“France’s military chose open source software after an internal
government debate that began in 2003 and culminated in a November
6, 2007, directive requiring state agencies “Seek maximum
technological and commercial independence.”“The military found Mozilla’s open source design permitted
France to build security extensions, while Microsoft’s secret,
proprietary software allowed no tinkering.”