Blackmoor Vituperative

France’s gendarmes and Ministry of Culture and Communication have done it, and now members of the country’s parliarment are about to switch to open source.

Starting in June 2007, PCs in French deputes’ offices will be equipped with a Linux operating system and open-source productivity software.

The project, backed by parliament members Richard Cazenave and Bernard Carayon of the Union for a Popular Movement party, will see 1,154 French parliamentary workstations running on Linux, with OpenOffice.org productivity software, the Firefox Web browser and an open-source e-mail client.

(from ZDNet, French parliament dumping Windows for Linux)

The French have gotten a lot of bad press ever since they criticized the violent international misadventures of the USA. Maybe this will help remind people that France was the Western technological power for centuries. With any luck, it will remind the French, as well — they seem to have forgotten.

Vive la France!

I wonder why this anti-French sentiment is not publicly condemned. Other nationalities are also sometimes the butt of jokes, but not to the extent the French are. No one with any sense seriously thinks that the Irish are all wife-beating drunks, or suggests replacing “nachos” with “freedom Fritos”. Why is it that the mainstream culture accepts angry, even hateful comments about the French, where the same comments about Mexicans, the Irish, the Japanese, or — heaven forbid — Africans would elicit a stern and righteous response? Why are we willing to demonize France, and not (for example) China? Are we (Americans) really so insecure that we’ll attack anyone who disagrees with us, even when many of us know that we’re wrong?

I don’t get people, sometimes. Make that “most times”.