

French Government To Use PostgreSQL, LibreOffice In Free Software Adoption Push - EdwardQ
http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/open-source/3400404/french-govt-use-postgresql-libreoficce-in-free-software-adoption-push/

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cs702
The upfront costs of migration (including retraining, coping with missing
features, and solving a wide variety of little compatibility issues as they
arise) will surely exceed what it would have cost the French Government to
stay on Microsoft Office for one or two more waves of upgrades. The important
question is: will the upfront cost and disruption be worth it?

The data presented by the city of Munich six months ago provides compelling
evidence that the answer is a resounding YES: the _recurring savings_ from
migration will exceed its upfront costs.[1]

The city of Munich identified three types of cost savings: (1) it no longer
has to pay for license upgrades, eliminating a significant recurring cost
forever; (2) its desktop software and hardware no longer have to be updated as
frequently, reducing another significant recurring cost forever; and (3)
surprisingly, Munich claims its IT department is fielding fewer user
complaints with free software, reducing another major cost forever.

\--

Edit: There's an additional benefit from migration not mentioned by Munich
which I think will become very important over time. According to this article,
the French government intends to reinvest "between 5 percent and 10 percent of
the money they save" on contributing to the development of the applications
they use, so they will have _direct, hands-on input_ into which features get
added to such applications and even how such features are implemented. The
French government, in other words, will become a 'co-owner' of these Free
Software applications, giving them more control over their own IT future. How
much is _that_ worth?

\--

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3787539>

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r00fus
Wasn't a huge benefit of the libre-software push by Munich the fact that local
jobs would be created by the extension, maintenance and customization of the
government systems? ie, instead of paying Microsoft/Oracle/HP/IBM US dollars
for upgrades/features, they pay Müncheners some DM/euros for the same.

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debacle
Why are people shitting so much over LibreOffice? I have both on my machine in
the office, and I've set LibreOffice to the default and use it almost
exclusively. It's faster than Office, has a better UI, more features I see as
essential (save to PDF is nice), and the leap from Office to LibreOffice these
days is tiny.

~~~
mootothemax
_Why are people shitting so much over LibreOffice?_

Possibly from past experience; I can't be the only one who's had a red face
after emailing a document, only to find out that in Word, the formatting's off
_just slightly enough_ to make the entire thing look unprofessional.

This was a good many years ago, and I accept that things may have changed, but
Word and Excel work for me _right now_ , and have the added bonus that I can
trust what I'm sending to clients.

Just for the avoidance of doubt, I realise that this entire situation could be
avoided by using tools meant for the job. Sadly, that wouldn't go down as well
with a lot of clients who aren't as technically-savvy as the average HN user.

~~~
polshaw
send as pdf if you need exact formatting (and not editing), surely?

~~~
mootothemax
That's why I wrote: _I realise that this entire situation could be avoided by
using tools meant for the job. Sadly, that wouldn't go down as well with a lot
of clients who aren't as technically-savvy as the average HN users._

Edit: Being more helpful, have you ever had to try and explain to a client
_who would much rather be doing other things_ , why they can't edit the
document you've sent them?

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sheff
I remember reading about a largeish legacy French government system migrating
to Postgres a couple of years ago, so maybe they've decided Postgres fits the
bill for most scenarios they need a DB for.

According to these slides [1] that system did about a billion SQL statements a
day at the time, so pretty good going.

[1]
[http://wiki.postgresql.org/images/1/1c/PGDayEU2010_CNAF_Post...](http://wiki.postgresql.org/images/1/1c/PGDayEU2010_CNAF_PostgreSQL_migration.pdf)

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hollerith
Part of the reason governments are interested in open-source software is their
worry about the possibility of the U.S. government's inducing U.S.
corporations to put back doors in popular proprietary software.

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pluies
If by "adopted" you mean "are being considered in part of a plan pitched to
the Prime Minister", then yes, otherwise... Well let's just say I've worked in
a French administration's IT dept and they tend to take their time.

~~~
lloeki
It's actively used in various institutions. Relatives working there asked for
a little help a few years ago to set up Postgres and migrate their Access
stuff over.

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skrebbel
Poor French civil servants. Being forced to use LibreOffice is a demotivating
and frustrating experience. F.ex. Writer is like MS Word 1997, but shabbier.
If you're paying an employee more than minimum wage, don't kill their
productivity and motivation by feeding them sub-par tools.

~~~
4ad
I'm amazed this is getting downvoted. I didn't expect LibreOffice's lack of
quality to be a controversial fact. I though it was accepted as the status
quo. After all, everyone agrees that Gimp is inferior to Photoshop, although
it can be used fine in certain scenarios if you are willing to fight with it.
LibreOffice is absolutely dreadful, much worse in comparison to Word than Gimp
in comparison with Photoshop.

~~~
nodata
> everyone agrees

So let's see some examples then.

Why is LibreOffice "absolutely dreadful"?

~~~
bitwize
_So let's see some examples then._

In GIMP, where are the layer groups? The nondestructive editing?

These are _basic tools_ to a professional workflow.

And don't get me started on CMYK. You cannot do prepress without CMYK support;
GIMP was going to get it Real Soon Now for the past ten years and it's still
not there.

~~~
jeltz
The reason for why no CMYK and why no non-destructive editing is that GEGL
development took way longer than expected. Now that more and more of the GIMP
core is converted to GEGL I am confident GIMP will eventually get these
features.

GIMP is the story of what happens when you wait with new features until "the
right solution" is completed. Not that I really blame them since they have
very few developers.

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timc3
Using PostgreSQL is just a damn good idea. LibreOffice, well I would say not
so much.

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cygnus
It's a nice idea, better than their mighty OpenOffice Firewall.
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4LofqPCQew>

(yes, this is an ex French Ministrer of Culture talking about open source)

~~~
RyanMcGreal
I don't understand what she's saying, in French or English.

~~~
l0nk
Hi,

I'm french.

She's saying that you can protect your computer from illegal downloading stuff
form internet using a firewall, and you can get one for free. (fun) She wants
to give an example, and she said that on hers gov computer she got an
opensource one which is called openoffice. After that she become a meme on
french websites.

~~~
scriptproof
Not exactly, she said that OpenOffice as Office has a firewall. Not that it is
a firewall.

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propercoil
If i had one dollar for every time i saw a "Government X installed open source
Y" post... it's started in 1999 and still haunts me

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luriel
This is a good move, any government using Oracle is wasting taxpayers money
and being irresponsible and negligent with its citizen's data.

One could talk of NSA backdoors, but there is no need, the security of Oracle
products is laughable at best, there is no need for backdoors.

