By gradually migrating to a complete open source desktop and web applications, Gendarmerie Nationale, the French national police force with 105,000 employees, has saved millions of euros. The move cuts Microsoft out of the equation, helping the French national police force slash its IT costs by 70 percent.

The French Gendarmerie Nationale police contributed to the code of the last version of Mozilla Thunderbird with security extensions named "TrustedBird".

French Directorate General of Public Finance dumps Microsoft software; The French Gendarmerie should remove Mono from Ubuntu

Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu, now reports the police force has upgraded its 85,000 PCs to Ubuntu Desktop Edition, removing its reliance on the Microsoft operating system completely.

The French national police force has slashed its IT costs by 70 per cent by cutting Microsoft out of the equation.

Scoop: « Richard Stallman et la révolution du logiciel libre » will soon be translated into English and published by GNU Press — (source) —

The French paramilitary police force said Wednesday it is ditching Microsoft for the free Linux operating system, becoming one of the biggest administrations in the world to make the break.

An important open source event will take place in Paris on September 24th and 25th 2008 : it is called "Paris Capitale du Libre" (PCL) and it is organised by the FNILL (French national federation of the free
software industry): http://www.paris-libre.org/.

According to Lieutenant-Colonel Xavier Guimard's calculations, the French police plans to save $50 million in switching from Windows to Ubuntu.