Mandrakesoft today announced an agreement with the French
Ministry of Education and Research which allows the distribution of
its line of products and services to Higher Education institutions,
including universities and research laboratories, throughout
France. The agreement also makes it easy for students and workers
from these institutions to purchase Mandrakesoft products for their
private use.
From now on, computing departments of universities and research
institutions will have the ability to tap into Mandrakesoft’s
portfolio of products and services for their software needs.
Mandrakelinux products cover needs from the desktop (with the
PowerPack) to critical infrastructure functions (with the Multi
Network Firewall). The Multi Network Firewall operating system is
able to control access to both an organisation’s private intranet
and the public internet. Mandrakesoft products are part of the
software library which has been selected to modernize the
infrastructure of France’s education system. As well as the
applications themselves, Mandrakesoft will deliver technical
support and training to staff.
A spokesman for the Ministry explained: “Aside from the cost
savings allowed by Linux, this agreement aims to encourage the use
of software solutions that are based on open standards and can be
easily integrated into public standards-driven infrastructures. The
ability to modify or customize the applications purchased is
important to us.”
Students, particularly in computing courses, engineering schools
and research departments, are among the groups the most accustomed
to using open source software. Many researchers already use open
source applications for scientific tasks. Familiarizing students
with Linux during their education will further foster the building
of a knowledge society based on open technologies in a
heterogeneous computing environment.
“We’ve been working with the Ministry of Education for more than
five years. This agreement is an acknowledgement of the high
standard of our products. What we see is that Linux is increasingly
being adopted as an alternative to the all-proprietary choice of
the past,” commented François Bancilhon, Mandrakesoft CEO.
“What better support could we bring to students and researchers,
who are the primary members of a knowledge economy, than open
computing, allowing everyone to customize tools for their specific
needs?”
The catalog of software covered by the agreement includes the
newly released Corporate Server and Corporate Desktop, two
applications that enable universities and research bodies to build
a stable yet flexible infrastructure, immune to viruses.