Plans developed by the IT department of the French city of Marseille to replace its three desktops operating systems by a single proprietary operating system, are breaking procurement rules, alleges April, an association on free software and Libertis, a association of IT service companies specialising in this type of software.
In a call for tender, a public administration can request the use of open source, April and Libertis write in their statement published on 19 October. "However, to select one particular brand is strictly prohibited by the Procurement Code."
In its statement, the two associations protest the end to Marseille's plans to move to an open source desktop operating system: "The chief technology officer (CTO) has abruptly stopped the switch to Linux and is imposing his personal choices. We denounce his illegal and authoritarian choices that go against the interests of the city and the taxpayers of Marseille."
Jean-Marie Angi, CTO for the city of Marseille, on Friday rejected the accusations. "We fully comply with the procurement rules. Those who claim otherwise formulate serious and unfounded accusations."
April's president, Tangui Morlier, stood by the associations' statement: "The CTO has already announced his plan that specify moving to Microsoft Windows 7. Procurement rules do not allow this."
The CTO's outlined his plan in a memo sent in July to the IT department of Marseille. In the memo, leaked to the Internet, the CTO writes he will end of the city's use of the Mac OS X operating system, stop the research on moving to the Linux open source operating system and announces that the city will unify its five thousand workstations to using the most recent version of Microsoft's operating system.
According to April, the CTO also made these plans without discussing them with the city's deputy mayor, Daniel Sperling, responsible for IT at the city administration. Morlier: "We wrote to Mr. Sperling, and he is not aware of the CTO's decision."
Deputy mayor Sperling, did not respond to repeated requests by email and telephone for comment.
More information:
Statement by April and Libertis (in French)
Journal du Net news item (in French)
Marsactu news item (in French0
Framablog (in French)