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

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.

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

"Today the Gendarmerie Nationale (The French national police force) announced the migration of up to 70,000 computers to Ubuntu over the next 3 years..."

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

"A new movie has dealt yet another severe blow to the credibility of US based Monsanto, one of the biggest chemical companies in the world and the provider of the seed technology for 90 percent of the world’s genetically engineered (GE) crops -- The French documentary, called “The world according to Monsanto” and directed by independent filmmaker Marie-Monique Robin, paints a grim picture of a company with a long track record of environmental crimes and health scandals..." -- French reports by Tristan Nitot (Standblog): http://standblog.org/blog/post/2008/03/12/Le-monde-selon-Monsanto

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

The Berlin-based union of the German police issued a press release two days ago, where they said that their “Poliks” system to handle reports isn’t stable and reliable enough. Taking up a report into that system often would take between 30 and 90 minutes, which would be awkward. Also, the 73 million Euro system would crash far too often.