Enterprise open source Toolkit

French police find open source arresting

Published: 19 Jan 2005 13:10 GMT

French police are planning to switch from Microsoft Office to open source productivity suite OpenOffice.org, a spokesman confirmed on Wednesday.

There will soon be up to 35,000 PCs equipped with OpenOffice.org at the Gendarmerie Nationale, a department of the French Police force, according to reports.

It is understood that a total of 80,000 PCs will eventually be migrated to the open source productivity suite by this summer. The department is expected to save more than €2m through this migration.

A spokesman from the French police confirmed the migration was happening but was unable to provide any additional details at this time.

This is not the first government organisation to migrate to OpenOffice.org on a wide scale. The City of Munich in Germany is due to migrate 14,000 PCs to OpenOffice.org and Linux by 2008. The City of Bergen, in Norway, is also due to migrate desktops in its 100 schools, which have 32,000 pupils and 4,000 teachers. The Ministry of Defence in Singapore has already installed OpenOffice.org on 5,000 PCs, and is planning to deploy it on a further 15,000 PCs.