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France Endorses UN Open Source Principles

social.numerique.gouv.fr

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Re: France Endorses UN Open Source Principles

#171

Post by kergonath »

StopDisinfo910 wrote: post #156
bambax wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this is definitely untrue > Obviously, everyone still use Office because, well, there is no alternative to Office So it is, indeed, true. Can you clarify what your point is, exactly? (Also: there is an alternative to MS Office, which is LibreOffice. It works ok. It's not as powerful, maybe (maybe!) but it's fine.) > Do you realise how funny it is to see you complain that you can't see the car companies in a data ba…

> So it is, indeed, true. Office is a fairly unsignificant part of our cloud usage. I'm fairly sure we could come to an agreement with Microsoft if we needed to self-host. > there is an alternative to MS Office, which is LibreOffice People don't use Office like it's the 90s anymore. Everything which doesn't have seemless collaboration and document sharing is dead on arrival. > No, I really don't. It's not "awesome" t…

> The state doesn't owe you anything apart from safety and law enforment.

The parent was a bit whiny, but this is most definitely not true. The people are not entities subject to the state, it is a democratic and social republic, not a soviet. The people are the state and as such, the role of the state is to do whatever the people want it to do. In France, the state is supposed to guarantee the rights of Man, which is more fundamental than the constitution and also broader than safety and law enforcement.

> It's baffling to me how the French seemingly fail to realise how incredible the breadth of services their government provides is and somehow manage to make themselves miserable rather than actually doing something of what they are gifted with.

This I can agree with :) These threads are baffling, particularly considering what the people at INRIA are doing about trusted and transparent administration, and the massive effort put into sovereign software. It’s like everything is bad because they saw people using Windows at their city hall.

Re: France Endorses UN Open Source Principles

#172

Post by lou1306 »

idoubtit wrote: post #34

This is just for show, and facts won't follow. It's not the first time a French government vows to stick to Open Source. Yet most of the public money goes to proprietary software, and Open Source is the exception. Two months ago, the French government signed an "open bar" contract with Microsoft for the "Éducation Nationale" department. 152 M€, not for Open Source. Source (fr) https://www.april.org/nouvel-open-bar-mi…

Uh, I know n=1, but I used to work in a public research lab in France for almost a couple years, and already back then (4-5 years ago) they used tons of FOSS. Zimbra, Mattermost, Gitlab, the works. So I don't think it's all just theater.

Then again, if your employees still need PowerPoint, I say let them have it for now. You cannot switch a single company to FOSS overnight, let alone the entire public sector of an industrial nation.

Re: France Endorses UN Open Source Principles

#173

Post by kergonath »

bsaul wrote: post #108
jeynec wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These initiatives are only for show. I work in one of the biggest French goverment entity and no one uses this. We still very much use Microsoft products for virtually everything, and everything "sovereign" (Resana, Pline...) just doesn't work or isn't as convenient

not sure why you were downvoted. You're working there, so i guess your testimony is an interesting data point.

They are downvoted because their statement (that this is “only for show”) is simply not true. It may be their experience, but I know a few people in different government agencies and I can say that it is far more than show. There are more arguments in the thread about why their point of view is partial.

Also, you are likely downvoted because talking about downvotes is boring and does not bring anything, and also because what was downvoted when you posted might be upvoted now, leaving these complaints look a bit silly.

Re: France Endorses UN Open Source Principles

#174

Post by bambax »

rad_gruchalski wrote: post #166
bambax wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this is definitely untrue > Obviously, everyone still use Office because, well, there is no alternative to Office So it is, indeed, true. Can you clarify what your point is, exactly? (Also: there is an alternative to MS Office, which is LibreOffice. It works ok. It's not as powerful, maybe (maybe!) but it's fine.) > Do you realise how funny it is to see you complain that you can't see the car companies in a data ba…

Why is it even relevant what car was involved in an accident?

In "one" accident, maybe not very. But as a criteria to do statistical studies, make, model, year and maintenance would be quite interesting. The whole point of this data is to do studies.

Re: France Endorses UN Open Source Principles

#175

Post by kergonath »

robertlagrant wrote: post #141
StopDisinfo910 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Typical French reaction to anything positive. Everytime someone actually does something nice in this country, there will be a dozen nay-sayers complaining uselessly that it is not perfect while doing nothing of value themselves. It always saddens me to see a country with so much too succeed being so impaired by its own citizens.

This comment didn't impair anything being done, though. I totally agree with it. The EU could do something non-performative by it and its governments stopping issuing documents in proprietary Microsoft formats and use OSS only.

> The EU could do something non-performative by it and its governments stopping issuing documents in proprietary Microsoft formats and use OSS only.

They would get hairy quickly, because the Office formats are actually open standards.

It’s also a tall order. How they run their administration is fundamentally the member-states’ prerogative, I don’t really see what lever the commission would have to bend the council on that subject.

Re: France Endorses UN Open Source Principles

#176

Post by bambax »

kergonath wrote: post #171
StopDisinfo910 wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So it is, indeed, true. Office is a fairly unsignificant part of our cloud usage. I'm fairly sure we could come to an agreement with Microsoft if we needed to self-host. > there is an alternative to MS Office, which is LibreOffice People don't use Office like it's the 90s anymore. Everything which doesn't have seemless collaboration and document sharing is dead on arrival. > No, I really don't. It's not "awesome" t…

> The state doesn't owe you anything apart from safety and law enforment. The parent was a bit whiny, but this is most definitely not true. The people are not entities subject to the state, it is a democratic and social republic, not a soviet. The people are the state and as such, the role of the state is to do whatever the people want it to do. In France, the state is supposed to guarantee the rights of Man, which i…

> It’s like everything is bad because they saw people using Windows at their city hall.

No. French state companies (including military schools! and the Department of Education!!) use Windows, MS Office, and US-based cloud providers en masse. Good for them, I guess. I don't really care.

But pretending to do the opposite is what gets me.

Or when the Head of the BPI (Banque Publique d'Investissement) goes on TV to say that France should only buy French tech, and you learn that the same BPI that he leads, just signed a huge contract with AWS, then that's upsetting. (He's also very concerned with China because the Chinese State finances some of its private industry; never mind that it's the whole purpose and mission of the BPI.)

Re: France Endorses UN Open Source Principles

#177

Post by rad_gruchalski »

bambax wrote: post #174
rad_gruchalski wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it even relevant what car was involved in an accident?

In "one" accident, maybe not very. But as a criteria to do statistical studies, make, model, year and maintenance would be quite interesting. The whole point of this data is to do studies.

But why focus on the car only? To me it would be interesting to know where has the driver got the driver license from. Or if they have a medical condition. Or maybe they have a stiff neck on the day of the accident. Were they distracted by children?

I’m probably failing to see the difference between Peugeot 208 or Renault 5 being involved in an accident. What insights could one expect from this info?

Re: France Endorses UN Open Source Principles

#178

Post by mytailorisrich »

sunshine-o wrote: post #103

At this point Open Source doesn't mean anything anymore. It is like everybody putting a "fat free" logo on highly processed junk food a few decades ago. Yes but what is fat exactly? What really make me suspicious is there is now a very dense web of fake, captured foundations and non profits with a lot of money flowing through them. Most of them do not write any code of course and it is very hard to understand they pu…

> At this point Open Source doesn't mean anything anymore

Agreed and a case in point are those UN principles that bundle unrelated things together.

Re: France Endorses UN Open Source Principles

#179

Post by cpa »

pauletienney wrote: post #112

As an illustration of it: I have been working for two years on a new national project for the french state. Le Référentiel National des Bâtiments (for National Buildings Registry) which aim at creating and distributing a id key to every building in the country. The goal is to make databases about buildings much more interoperable. One key aspect is to have a precise list of all buildings includings recent constructio…

And it’s an awesome dataset! My startup wouldn’t exist in its current form without it (elementdeclencheur.fr)

Re: France Endorses UN Open Source Principles

#180

Post by robertlagrant »

kergonath wrote: post #175
robertlagrant wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment didn't impair anything being done, though. I totally agree with it. The EU could do something non-performative by it and its governments stopping issuing documents in proprietary Microsoft formats and use OSS only.

> The EU could do something non-performative by it and its governments stopping issuing documents in proprietary Microsoft formats and use OSS only. They would get hairy quickly, because the Office formats are actually open standards. It’s also a tall order. How they run their administration is fundamentally the member-states’ prerogative, I don’t really see what lever the commission would have to bend the council on…

> because the Office formats are actually open standards

They are technically open standards in that they've been ratified, but I'm not sure they're fully independently implementable.

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