The French government is now seriously looking at implementing open source software in the public sector after a public debate for France’s Digital Republic bill (La République numérique).

European countries are moving towards open source, and that has become increasingly obvious in the past couple of years. It started with the adoption of open document formats, and it's slowly moving towards the adoption of open source solutions, for operating systems and office suites, mostly. It's a bumpy transition, and it's not easy to do, especially since the public sector has been using the same kind of proprietary software for years.

Just a couple of days ago, the UK government signed a new deal with a company named Collabora that will bring LibreOffice with cloud support for the entire administration apparatus, and that is a really big change. Now, the French government and parliament need to take into consideration what's been said and discussed in the Digital Republic bill.

The times are changing

The Microsoft monopoly is slowly losing its grip, and it looks like more and more governments and city administrations are choosing to go the way of much cheaper open source solutions. It's a slow and difficult process, but buying licenses is no longer a priority.

"France’s citizens are in favour of their public administrations’ use of free and open source software. France should also implement this type of software in education, according to the results of a public consultation on France’s Digital Republic bill (La République numérique). After twenty days of public debate and voting on proposals, the consultation ended on Sunday. La République numérique - the Digital Republic - drew 147,710 votes, received 8501 proposals and attracted 21,330 participants. The proposals will now be considered by the French government," reads the report on Joinup.

Unlike the UK, which is already taking the appropriate measures to get this implemented, France still has a long way to go. Even if the law passes, nothing will happen in 2015, and we'll most likely see some changes next year.