Don't worry about the budget, education is the second most funded government feature in France after healthcare/social security, and before Defence [1] (in French)

(103 billions EUR for education in 2020 by the central government only, 67 for Defence, and surprisingly little resources about how much social security actually costs, on an extensive scale) (local governments allocate more resources, mostly for the maintenance or buildings and supplies)

Teachers have had free licenses for MS Office since forever, even for personal computers) Computers can be pretty new in most schools. But network and host administration is more than patchy in most schools, due to a lack of qualified and dedicated employees, so they're ok with purchasing SW that works out of the box. (We used to maintain the school computers with a small group of students when we were in HS)

Actually, free software advocates have been complaining by the price of MS products, compared to the subventions to make free software.

And anyway, MS Office is the only software consistently used in ANY branch of government. It's a staple. Some Defence ppl have even been complaining that you might not want to run NSA-approved American SW for everything, especially as it often came on Chinese Lenovo HW. (While top government officials reminded that the USA is friendly, and that you can't go to the extent of making chips out of the sand from Brittany, a region with cold beaches in the west of France)

So the budget and the usage for Office already exist, for everyone

[1] https://www.economie.gouv.fr/facileco/comptes-publics/budget...

I understand the skepticism, but:

> education is the second most funded government feature in France after healthcare/social security

Both of which are under heavy pressure to reduce costs, which also leads to the waves of strikes (I know, France, strikes, name a more iconic duo. But their conditions are actually super shitty). They don't have enough money to cover salary raises among the inflation, that money going to US monopolies doesn't look go under any light you put it.

> Teachers have had free licenses for MS Office since forever

Local licenses might stay, 365 ones are going away (here the free tier is targeted, and Education minister targeted Microsoft in particular to freeze new licenses)

> Actually, free software advocates have been complaining by the price of MS products, compared to the subventions to make free software.

These decisions are actually not bound to bring fully free software in the mix. Proprietary solutions seem to be eyed at (those could be based on free software of course, but money will be exchanged at the end of the day)

My general take is that up until now "nobody is fired for choosing MS" was the basic principle, but that doesn't mean it stays that way forever. Switch to linux was a step in that direction already, and they committed to it up to a point. Stopping Office 365 propagation goes in that same direction.

See, this kind of misunderstanding (that doesn't happen in French, BTW) is why calling it «free software» instead of «libre software» is IMHO a bad idea...

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.en.html

> It's an important point, but doesn't remove weight from the decision.

Which FOSS alternatives provide similar functionality to Offices 365/Docs, and don't cost somewhere around ~$10/seat in IT time to set up and administer?

A git repository and an installation of LibreOffice don't meet that bar. Collaborative editing, good-enough default access control and security, and document sharing that doesn't consist of emailing "March Report_Version_6 (Copy 2)--actually final--.doc" around.

You don't need that until uni, do you?

1. Students aren't the only people who use productivity software in schools.

2. You don't need computers at all until uni, and yet...

And generally speaking, the alternative to this stuff in schools isn't FOSS, it's proprietary shit that costs $XY(Z)/seat and steals student data for use in its anti-plagiarism feature.

The court's ruling is fine and reasonable, but the conclusions people are drawing from it are not.

In France, some middle/high school classes actually teach you how to use a word processor. Some of them also include group presentations with slides

So computers are pretty much a necessity yes.

> but doesn't remove weight from the decision.

Why? They can still use it, but under the non-free version which is under the necessary compliance.

Which costs cash that has to come from a budget

Which they have to pay for anyways since they are schools and public admins.

But this isn't a budgetary issue, it's a compliance issue which is why they are paying for it. What's your point?

The point is that the free version is currently wide spread, and forcing payment means lots of districts will have to justify additional costs in their budget. With Europeans increasingly disgruntled at US companies at least some of these districts will find or make due with alternatives. This has macrolevel effects.

... if only Microsoft was a private company that can adapt itself (and even put sales teams on this) in less time than a government minister needs to request permission to enter their office.

I've heard of Microsoft education deals that involved paying 500 to 5000. With your choice of a macbook for every 500, or a lenovo laptop for every 200 paid.

This is shifting the goal posts away from anything I was arguing. Do better

Who uses the free version of Office 365?

apparently most french schools

> Then a specific budget needs to be approved to use Office, which will reduce its use to only people actually needing it

You have great faith in bureaucracy. The reality is anybody who was using a free version before will probably be given a paid version afterwards, and if not then the cost of administration and the creation of new fiefdoms around this process would be a net burden on efficiency anyway.