Slashdotted the French National Assembly’s experience to embrace open source as a standard :

The French National Assembly is in the news as they have recently switched to Linux, OpenOffice.org & open source software at the request of several deputy members. Bernard Carayon wrote it it into the proposal entitled ‘On Equal Terms‘ [French PDF]. From the article, ‘IT staff at the National Assembly have almost six months to prepare the switch to open source.’ The same document urged France to adopt ODF as a standard. Hopefully things go more smoothly for them than the Birmingham library effort.