Summary
- France will cut its reliance on extra-EU proprietary tech, favoring open-source and digital sovereignty.
- DINUM orders ministries to map dependencies and plan exit from extra-European tech by fall.
- France plans to replace Windows with Linux; EU open-source options include openSUSE.
As open-source tools begin to catch up with their proprietary cousins, people are realizing they're handing over far more control to businesses than they probably need to. After all, when two apps essentially do the same thing, but one is open-source, and the other can cut you off from its service on a moment's notice, it's hard to justify using the latter.
Now, the French government has decided that enough is enough. It has announced that it will shift away from proprietary technologies from outside the European Union and focus more on open-source solutions — and part of that means ditching Windows for Linux.
France begins cutting itself from US tech as it moves to open-source solutions
On the numérique website, the direction interministérielle du numérique (DINUM) issued a statement on its stance regarding what it calls "extra-European" tech. This term essentially refers to anything outside the European Union, but some of the statements and goals the DINUM has made specifically name America as a country it's planning to break away from.
One of the key elements of this foreign breakaway is DINUM's "exit from Windows in favor of workstations running on the Linux operating system." While it's one of DINUM's biggest points, the source does say it intends to bring this same mentality across all of its tech. Ministries have until fall to draw up a plan for how they will remove themselves from extra-European sources, with a rollout date not yet confirmed.
David Amiel, Minister of Public Action and Accounts, makes a strong case for ditching proprietary technology outside the EU (machine translated from French):
The State can no longer simply acknowledge its dependence; it must break free. We must become less reliant on American tools and regain control of our digital destiny. We can no longer accept that our data, our infrastructure, and our strategic decisions depend on solutions whose rules, pricing, evolution, and risks we do not control. The transition is underway: our ministries, our operators, and our industrial partners are now embarking on an unprecedented initiative to map our dependencies and strengthen our digital sovereignty. Digital sovereignty is not optional.
So, where does this leave Linux? It'll be interesting to see where the DINUM goes from here. If its main concern is being locked into a proprietary business model outside the EU, it likely won't have an issue using open-source solutions, regardless of where the software originates. If it does want to go full EU-only, it does have some options; some open-source software, like the operating system openSUSE and the productivity suite LibreOffice, originates from within the EU, so it won't be too stuck for choice.
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It has criticized Microsoft's aggressive practices, licensing models, and telemetry, noting that Linux + LibreOffice is actually the superior combo.