Zut alors! French military helped code Thunderbird 3

 

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By Reuters

Posted on 10 Dec 2009 at 11:06

Mozilla's new Thunderbird 3 email client contains code from an unusual source - the French military.

The story of how the French Government became involved with the open-source movement goes back six years.

France's military chose open-source software after an internal Government debate that began in 2003 and culminated in a 2007 directive requiring state agencies to "seek maximum technological and commercial independence."

The primary changes the military have made allow them to know for sure when messages have been read, which is critical in a command-and-control organisation

The military found Mozilla's open-source design permitted France to build security extensions, while Microsoft's proprietary Outlook software allowed no tinkering.

"We started with a military project, but quickly generalised it," says Lieutenant-Colonel Frederic Suel of the Ministry of Defence and one of those in charge of the project.

The Gendarmerie Nationale police, which was part of the military at the time and did the design, released some of its work to the public under the name "TrustedBird," and co-branded it with Mozilla.

The military uses Mozilla's Thunderbird mail software and (in some cases) the Trustedbird extension on 80,000 computers, and it has spread to the ministries of Finance, Interior and Culture.

Code contribution

Thunderbird 3 used some of the code from TrustedBird, as well as drawing on 1,000 other sources around the world. "The primary changes [the military] have made allow them to know for sure when messages have been read, which is critical in a command-and-control organisation," says David Ascher, chief executive of Mozilla Messaging.

That qualifies it for NATO's closed messaging system, and the French military has shown TrustedBird to NATO, military officials claim.

The French military is "helping build an ecosystem of specialists around the world that provide specialised add-ons, leveraging our platform to help meet customer needs," Mozilla's Ascher adds.