French students to be given open-source software

Filed under: Internet, Kids, News, E-mail, Mozilla, OpenOffice.org, Open Source

French students to be given open-source software

by Emily Price Feb 4th 2007

French authorities plan on passing out open-source software to incoming high school freshman next year.

The software expected to include Firefox and Thunderbird as well as an office suite; instant messaging software and an audio video player will be put on a USB flash drive and passed out to students at the beginning of the school year. The USB drive will give students the ability to check email and surf the web with personal preferences without purchasing each child their own personal laptop.

An expected 175,000 USB sticks will be passed out this year at a cost of around 3.4 million dollars. Should the program be a success the Greater Paris Regional Council plans on continuing it in following years.

The company that wins the bid for the USB sticks will determine the exact software included on the stick. All of the software is required to be open-source.

[via Yahoo!]

Tags: france, french school, FrenchSchool, open-source software, Open-sourceSoftware

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Gardiner Westbound said 2:34PM on 2-04-2007

A large crack just opened in the Microsoft universe.

JK said 4:36PM on 2-04-2007

Funny that they make this announcement right as Vista get's introduced. Maybe France will save the world from DRM. It could be worse for M$, they could have decided to openly promote piracy like China.

james 42 said 4:48AM on 2-05-2007

Seems like a rather clever idea.

Michael Rehberger said 4:36PM on 2-05-2007

Brilliant! Hopefully this is the start of a new trend. Students especially shouldn't have to pay for software. Nice move France. I don't plan on getting Vista. Once support drops for XP i'll probably switch to Ubuntu.

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