French civil service minister Renaud Dutreil has been telling Reuters that the French government wants to use open source software to resupply parts of its computer population of close to a million machines citing the country's runaway deficit.

Dutreil is quoted as saying, "We are not starting a war against Microsoft, or against American companies in the software sector," but that Microsoft "must return to being one supplier to the state among others."

Keeping its Office desktops up-to-date would run the French about $360 million over three years, Reuters says.

Dutreil thinks open source could cut that bill in half although that isn't what the city of Munich has been finding out.

Ripping out its Windows infrastructure is running Munich more than it would have to stay with Microsoft and if IBM and Novell hadn't throw in freebie consulting and migration analysis, the town would have been hard pressed to pay for it.

Microsoft intends to be competitive with the French.

The Reuters piece gladden the heart and the expectations of Mandrake boss Jacques Le Marois, who sent us a copy so we would miss it. Le Marois thinks Germany, Israel and Malay are also getting ready to fall to Linux and open source.