Desktop platforms Toolkit

French Inland Revenue service goes open source

Munir Kotadia ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 05 Aug 2004 17:00 BST

The French Inland Revenue service announced on Thursday that it has chosen JBoss's open-source application server to run the next version of its tax applications.

The move comes as part of a French ministry initiative called 'Copernic' that will overhaul the country's entire tax IT infrastructure. The ministry was accepting tenders for a J2EE application server and although they did not reveal which companies JBoss bid against, it is thought that IBM's Websphere, BEA's WebLogic and Oracle participated in the tender process. IT services firm Atos Origin will support the JBoss system for at least three years.

Jean-Marie Lapeyre, Copernic's technical director, said that a "detailed evaluation" had been conducted during the tender process and JBoss was chosen because of its reliability and performance.

"The advantages of open source are already well-known: very low cost -- or free of charge -- and source code opening that guarantees the reliability, durability and security of these solutions," said Lapeyre.

James Governor, principal analyst at RedMonk, said the announcement is an important step forward for the open-source movement.

"There has been a lot of talk about European public sector organisations adopting open-source technology, but it has been just talk. This is an announcement and a formal commitment to an open-source application server. That is why it is significant," Governor said.

The news comes a day after the city of Munich stalled its migration of 14,000 desktops from Windows to Linux because of potential legal issues.

Did you find this article useful?
61 out of 146 people found this useful

More In Desktop platforms

Company/Topic Alerts

Create a new alert from the list below:

Related Jobs

IBM Maximo Infrastructure Engineer

Included in the focus areas is the critical evaluation and selection of the software and hardware components of the infrastructure. IBM Maximo ...

Software Licensing Analyst

When you join the Student Loans Company, a commitment to your personal development and work-life balance comes as standard. Strong interpersonal ...

Application Management Analyst - Java

Unix and Shell Scripts - Appreciation of Application Architectures - Strong proven problem determination skills - Good Application Support process ...

Featured Talkback

So if you upgrade to XP SP3 you can't uninstall Internet Explorer, I'm quite sure I'm having a Deja-vu feeling about MS preventing people from uninstalling Internet Explorer in other Windows products.