You may remember last year that Munich decided to switch to Linux, despite Microsoft's making a last-minute "confidential offer" to the city which knocked their price from 27.3 million to 7 million euros. We can expect to see a similar panic from Microsoft if Paris gets serious about Linux. At the moment, it's only being reported that the city of Paris has commissioned a German company to make a study of a possible switchover. The stakes are high - not only would such a switchover involve a large number of computers (17,000 PCs and more than one hundred servers in 2,000 locations), but the prestige of the city of Paris would be a huge vote of confidence for Linux. The study will be done by the same German company (Unilog) which did the original study for Munich. We have to wait three months to see what the conclusion will be.

This is not the only political news from France involving Linux. A candidate for President of the departement Île-de-France, where Paris is situated, today announced his Linux-based campaign site at the Salon Solutions Linux at La Défense. He also met with Richard Stallman and other members of the FLOSS community. He is not the only French candidate to make a political statement by running his site on Linux.

Keep your eyes on Linux in France this year, it should be better than half-time at the Superbowl.