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June 9, 2008

The department at the French Ministry of Education that is handling the purchasing of software licenses is increasing its Open Source offerings to some 1.5 million teachers and education workers in 250 institutions in France, and is hinting that the trend will accelerate in the coming two to three years.

Dominique Verez, spokesperson for the Software Group for Higher Education and Research says that it signed an agreement with Mandriva, a French company developing a GNU/Linux distribution by the same name.

In May, the two organizations agreed on a sixty percent discount for the purchase of the commercial version of the free software for all teachers and staff at France's schools and universities.

Verez said "our goals are to promote alternative solutions, to offer more choices and to make our users less dependent on software vendors."

He estimates that at present, just barely ten percent of France's postgraduate schools and universities use any form of GNU/Linux. He says a similar percentage is using Max OS X. "The majority is still using Microsoft."

The discount agreement with Mandriva is valid until May 31, 2012.

How many of France's postgraduate schools and universities today use GNU/Linux distribution Mandriva isn't recorded, said Verez.

The French Ministry of Education negotiates with software vendors on behalf of France's postgraduate schools and universities, and then it takes care of dissemination of specific applications.

Source: Web Services.ca.

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