The French government should oblige public administrations to share and re-use their ICT solutions, recommends the Conseil National du Logiciel Libre, a trade group representing over three hundred ICT firms. The CNLL wants a future French government IT policy to include making mandatory the use of truly open standards. "Public administrations looking for ICT solutions should prefer free software."

The calls for increased support for free software initiatives are part of a preview of CNLL's bi-annual survey, published on 24 January. In the preview, titled 'Panorama de l'Open Source en France', CNLL requests the French government to state its preference for this type of software solutions in public tenders, similar to other countries.

The advocacy organisation welcomes last September's national guideline on free and open source. "It is a major step, welcomed by all professionals", CNLL writes. It would like the government to expand the scope of the guideline, making it less voluntary.

Rapid growth
The preview points to rapid growth for France's free and open source businesses. The number of firms rose by some 68 percent last year and CNLL expects an even faster increase for this year. With its members foreseeing recruitment problems, CNLL calls for increased efforts in schooling on free and open source. "Its openness and collaboration is in line with the scientific methodology. The greatest software in the world can be studied and students can contribute."

CNLL will present the results of the survey later this month.

More information:
CNLL's preview of open source in France (in French)
ZDNet news item (in French)