[ossig] France plans open source centre of excellence

[Ditesh Kumar]

From
http://www.techworld.com/news/index.cfm?newsID=7508&printerfriendly=1

France plans open source centre of excellence
Paris to be focal point of new economy, claims government.
Peter Sayer, IDG News Service 
06 December 2006

The French government will make Paris a centre of excellence for
open-source software development, it has announced.

French Minister of the Economy, Finance and Industry, Thierry Breton,
said the goal of the centre will be to develop a healthy and profitable
open-source software industry.

Breton, previously head of France Telecom, announced the plan at a news
conference to discuss a new report on the French economy's future, "The
intangible economy: tomorrow's growth" [pdf].

A new economic and technological model, built on free software, is
forming in the IT industry, Breton said. As this new opportunity opens
up, it is "calling into question the dominant positions formed in the
software industry over the last 15 years." France must seize this
opportunity, in a sector where the country is teeming with talent, he
said.

Breton hopes that sales of software and other intangibles will help the
French economy grow by between three percent and four percent annually.
In contrast, the Chinese economy, based on more tangible goods such as
the export of computers, is growing at around 10 percent annually,
according to figures from the OECD.

A group of academics and open-source software entrepreneurs have been
brought in to create the centre of excellence. Roberto Di Cosmo,
professor at the University of Paris, will lead the group, assisted by
Alexandre Zapolsky, CEO of open-source software services company
Linagora. François Bancilhon, CEO of Linux distributor Mandriva and
Stéfane Fermigier, CEO of open-source enterprise content management
software company Nuxeo will also take part.

The group's members said the centre will allow the Paris region to renew
its industrial base and slow the loss of jobs to low-cost locations.
Although the Internet other tools have simplified virtual collaborative
working, software development still needs a physical place, Di Cosmo
said. "It would be very naïve to forget the importance of human contact,
and the physical environment in which many projects grow before moving
into the virtual phase. If everything is so simple in the virtual world,
why are there so many developers' conferences?" he said.

Explaining the choice of Paris, Fermigier said, "We work with many
people elsewhere, but the kernel is in the Paris region." While Breton
is clearly most concerned with France's economic growth, the centre will
also contribute to the development of the software industry across the
European Union, Fermigier said.



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