---
title: "Scoop: French Organisations Adopt Eclipse Rich Clients"
date: 2005-08-24T00:59:07Z
modified: 2005-08-24T00:59:07Z
permalink: "https://redmonk.com/jgovernor/scoop-french-organisations-adopt-eclipse-rich-clients/"
type: post
status: publish
excerpt: ""
wpid: 326
categories:
  - Uncategorized
timestamp: 2005-08-24T00:59:07Z
tags:
  - Uncategorized
---

 I feel like a beat reporter again, with a hot news story. No need to call an industry analyst for a quote any more though, which is nice. So here is the scoop:

[Agence-France Press](http://www.afp.com/english/home/) will next month begin to roll out an end to end news creation and management platform using open source technologies, and an Eclipse-based rich client on the desktop, according to [Eric Barroca](http://blogs.nuxeo.com/sections/blogs/eric_barroca/). France’s Institute of Statutory auditors is pursuing a similar technical approach.

 [Nuxeo](http://www.nuxeo.com/en/) is a company thats offers [Zope](http://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&ct=res&cd=1&url=http%3A//www.zope.org/&ei=JxMKQ5nxNLfowQH0yNC3DQ) and [Python](http://www.php.net/) support and development services, and is moving forward with some pretty cool projects, based around its Collaborative Portal Server (CPS) system.

If you are interested in the notion of building activity-based applications on top of the [Eclipse Rich Client](http://www.eclipse.org/community/rcp.html) then the AFP project is one to keep a close eye on. IBM will likely be watching with interest. After all, the project is an alternative implementation of the Eclipse RCP, which IBM has positioned at the heart of its [Workplace](http://www.lotus.com/products/product5.nsf/wdocs/workplaceclienttech) user productivity strategy.

Eclipse RCP is a modular platform that allows developers to build applications with rich user interactions, offline storage, which take advantage of native system calls for user interfaces. Some RCP apps look pretty sweet. How about one for [wealth management](http://www.inventage.com/invweb/gencontent?page=solutions_capri&lang=en)?

AFP is one of the biggest newswires in the world. It is a jewel in the French cultural crown. It was using a 15 year old bespoke inhouse news production system and when it decided to get up to date it decided open source was the way to go. Everything from story creation, including multimedia, with full workflow control for editing and authorisation, with version control and auditing. The system can’t afford any downtime, because it supports real time news production. A rich client makes a lot of sense in that context. RCP will be integrated with Mozilla Compose, for editing and support of XHTML and NewsML respectively.

Someone from a big ISV yesterday told me you couldn’t do large scale content management without J2EE. Ahem…

For many French organizations, particularly those in the public sector, open source offers an opportunity to build systems without percieved loss of cultural control. Nuxeo is taking full advantage of the trend, with interesting projects throughout the French public sector.

For those that think this implementation sounds like a one off, you need to check out the French Institute of Statutory Auditors, which will also be using Eclipse RCP as a reader.

Microsoft also needs to wake up to a new potential threats/angles of attack. Eclipse RCP could be the next battleground in the European public sector market, and falls right in the heart of Microsoft’s rich client turf. Its not just the SuSE, RedHat and OpenOffice you need to compete with.

Disclaimers: \[I have not spoken directly to the AFP yet. Eclipse is a client. Nuxeo just came to give me a briefing\].

Eric contacted me and pointed out that the Mozilla composer editor is embedded in Eclipse RCP for this app.