Paris turns 175,000 kids onto open source

To help make kids aware of alternatives to proprietary software, the Ile-de-France (greater Paris) region will be giving 175,000 school children and apprentices a USB-key loaded with open source software.

The keys, which will contain a 'portable office', will be given to 130,000 secondary school pupils and 45,000 first-year apprentices at training centres at the start of the 2007 school year.

The 'portable office' will include an office software suite, an internet browser, an email client, an IM client and audio and video player software, according to the local council. The open source software will work in the Windows environment.

The project will "represent for students a tool of freedom and mobility between their school, cyber cafés and their home or friends' PCs", the council said. The operation will cost €2.6m.

The president of the local council, Jean-Paul Huchon, is a self-confessed "partisan of the rebalancing of the supply of proprietary and open source software", who previously welcomed the launch of the Firefox 2 browser and led the support for a creation of a competitiveness hub based on open source.