Il y a une dizaine d’années, parler de logiciels libres, relevait d’un acte de militantisme politico-technologique. Soutenir des valeurs de liberté et de partage, relevait de l’utopie dans un monde dominé par quelques mastodontes cultivant le culte de la “licence” à grands coups de publicité et de lobbyisme commercial. Il avait fallu des gourous barbus, hirsutes et teigneux, sous leur air gentil et pleins de bonne volonté pour expliquer au monde que les logiciels libres était le mieux de ce qui pouvait se faire en informatique. Richard Stallman et ses amis, n’ont ménagé aucun effort depuis des années pour acheminer ce message de liberté et de partage. Mais cela ne suffisait plus. Les logiciels libres pêchaient par leur manque d’ergonomie, et un ciblage particulier d’utilisateurs. Ils avaient la réputation d’être réservés à une population d’initiés geeks, seuls capables de les manipuler et de les faire évoluer. Mais ce changement de ciblage s’est opéré avec succès au fil des années. Il suffit d’observer les parts de marché en nette croissance pour Linux ou Firefox pour s’en rendre compte. Et nul besoin aujourd’hui d’avoir des prêcheurs pour promouvoir le libre. Les experts du marketing vous le diront : un bon produit n’a pas forcément besoin de publicité, et il finit par s’imposer de lui même. Le bouche à oreille est le meilleur plan marketing qui puisse exister. Source : http://www.elhyani.net/open-source-au-maroc-etat-des-lieux/

Moroccan Ministry of Agriculture, Rural Development and Sea Fisheries
chooses Mandriva Linux and Liberty Tech

Rabat, Morocco 

The Ministry of Agriculture, Rural Development and Sea Fisheries
(MARDSF), one of the first Moroccan government departments to take
advantage of free software, has just signed a contract with Liberty
Tech to migrate all its servers to Mandriva Linux. Technical support
will be handle by

Mandriva and Liberty Tech via a yearly subscription to the Mandriva
Corporate Club.

Beyond a simple client/provider relationship, the Division of Methods
and Computer Management Organisation (DMCMO) of the Ministry hopes to
establish a real technical development partnership with Liberty Tech,
especially for the development of Java applications with Eclipse, an
integrated development environment (IDE) with which Liberty Tech has
extensive experience.

A progressive migration to Linux

The MARDSF confirms through this contract of support and services with
Liberty Tech a longstanding policy of migration to free software.

As the ministry has already successfully migrated all its servers to
Linux, it is now also considering migrating its desktop machines. At
first only the machines of the DMCMO are being migrated, but it is
also planned to migrate all the systems in the MARDSF. In preparation,
the DMCMO staff who will be responsible for the migration have to
familiarize themselves with the technologies and develop the knowledge
necessary for their implementation, as well as for providing the first
line of technical support.

So since April 20th 2006, there have been about 25 servers and
desktops using Mandriva Linux, all located in the DMCMO.

According to Mr. Slasli, manager of the Division of Methods and
Computer Management Organisation of the Ministry of Sea Fisheries,
"There are four reasons for the choice of Mandriva and Liberty Tech:
- The quality of Mandriva Linux is recognized all over the world, 
- The availability of international support through Mandriva and a
  local centre of expertise through Liberty Tech,
- The desire to be as free as possible from proprietary software,
- The budget: expenses in terms of acquisition and support were
  reduced by 80%."

Corporate Club membership provides access to Mandriva technologies 

To provide maximum reduction of the cost of access to Mandriva Linux
software and technologies, the ministry subscribed, via Liberty Tech,
to the Mandriva Corporate Club.

This membership allows the DMCMO to have the Mandriva* products it
needs available on a local mirror (a DMCMO server updated
automatically by Mandriva) and to use them without any impact on the
fixing of a price scale. In computing the user's chosen threshold,
Mandriva does not make any distinction between a user "desktop" and a
user "server".

Beyond this threshold, the fixing of a price scale is based on the
number of total user deployments, in the following brackets: 26-50,
51-100, 101-200, 201-500, 501-1000, 1001-2000.

About Mandriva & Liberty Tech 

Mandriva, formerly known as Mandrakesoft, is represented exclusively
by Liberty Tech in Morocco, the only official representative of a
Linux distributor in Morocco.
Mandriva is the publisher of the popular Mandriva Linux operating
system, one of the most full-featured and easy to use Linux
systems. The company offers its enterprise, government, and
educational customers a complete range of GNU/Linux and open source
software and related services. Mandriva products are available in more
than 120 countries. Born in 1998, the company has offices in the
United States, France and Brazil. Mandriva is traded on Paris Euronext
Marché Libre (ISIN Code: FR0004159382/MLMAN; Reuters code: MAKE.PA)
and the US OTC market (stock symbol MDKFF).

Liberty Tech
1, avenue Abdelmalek Ben Marwan 70000 Laayoune -
Web. www.libertytech.ma
Email. libertytech@wanadoopro.ma
Statut. SARL - Capital. 100 000 Dirhams - RC 5341 Laayoune
Contact : Isabelle Reydet-Rousselet, P. 060 40 49 70

From:		Mandriva Press <press-AT-mandriva.com>
To:		lwn-AT-lwn.net
Subject:		Moroccan Ministry of Sea Fisheries choses Mandriva Linux
Date:		Tue, 11 Jul 2006 11:37:02 +0200 (CEST)

Source: https://lwn.net/Articles/191003/