France Says "Au Revoir" to Microsoft
In a move that should surprise no one, France announced plans to reduce its reliance on US technology, and Microsoft Windows is the first to get the boot.
Au revoir, Windows. Bonjour, Linux.
That's right, France is cutting ties with US technology, beginning with Microsoft, and it plans on migrating the government to Linux.
TechCrunch was one of the first to report this story, where it stated that French minister David Amiel said (translated) France's goal was “to regain control of our digital destiny” and that the "French government can no longer accept that it doesn’t have control over its data and digital infrastructure."
This is part of a broader movement across Europe toward digital sovereignty and the reduction of dependency on foreign providers, which began in January when the European Parliament voted in favor of a report to direct the EU Commission (EC) to help reduce its reliance on technology providers from other nations.
The first piece of software to get the ax from the EC was Microsoft Teams. In its place came Visio, which is based on open source and was created in France.
According to one Reddit post, France will adopt a hardened Linux distribution that is based on NixOS. According to that same post, the migration will be modest, starting with only 234 agents at the DINUM (Interministerial Digital Directorate).
Could this be the beginning of a new era of Linux use? Only time will tell.
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