ere's the scoop from Les Echos.fr on France's sudden change from its No vote to Abstain. Microsoft France's President Eric Boustouller sent AFNOR a letter [PDF] in French, of course. He tells a tale about OOXML and ODF progressing side by side and how if OOXML is approved, a group will be working hard to make the two more interoperable. Attached was a an HP statement of support for OOXML.

"As 2008 began, the international music industry was proudly predicting the dawning of a new age of co-operation between rightsholders, Internet companies and governments.

"The European Parliament adopted a resolution this morning which commits the member states - therefore France - «to avoid adopting measures conflicting with civil liberties and human rights and with the principles of proportionality, effectiveness and dissuasiveness, such as the interruption of Internet access.» This vote proves that the system of graduated response that Nicolas Sarkozy wants Fr

" France is about to filter internet content according to music and cinema majors’ request. We strongly oppose to the filtering of Internet content, either when the majors ask it, or when the european commissioner Frattini does. French government asked the CEO of FNAC, France biggest CD and DVD retail chain owned by the PPR* Group, to propose repressive measures against P2P file-sharing..."

"A new directive in France could see peer-to-peer users cut off if they continue to share files. A memorandum of understanding has been signed by some French ISPs, the recording industry and the French government under which ISPs will hand over data on who is using file sharing networks to a new government agency..."

"Xulfr team is a privileged observer of the use of the Mozilla platform in France. Most of us work professionally with Mozilla technologies. I thought it might be a good idea to write a little report about what has happened in France over the last few years as far as XUL is concerned..."

By putting legal and monetary pressure on Internet service providers (in a most subtler way than in previous versions of the text), ACTA will give the music and movie industries a weapon to force them to police their networks and users themselves. Such a private police and justice of the Net is incompatible with democratic imperatives and represent a real threat for fundamental freedoms.

«...I strongly recommend you the answers by José Bové, an "altermondialist" candidate, which where written by a team of specialists of free software in France. This can be considered as a political program for the Free Software movement in France...»

Yes, this sounds every bit as ridiculous to me as it probably does you. The Société civile des Producteurs de Phonogrammes en France, or SPPF -- France's analogue to the RIAA -- is preparing to file suit not only against the makers of various P2P sharing apps, but SourceForge.net, which provides code hosting for many such projects.