Every buck fixes a bug. Levée de fonds pour le site web de la campagne PDF readers

Que penseriez-vous si votre gouvernement vous imposait une marque de voiture à conduire sur les routes publiques ? De la même manière que les administrations publiques sont tenues d'être neutres à ce sujet, elles ne devraient pas non plus décider du logiciel que vous devez utiliser pour lire des documents PDF. L'État devrait offrir un choix et également promouvoir des logiciels qui respectent les libertés de ses citoyens.

Avec l'exemple des lecteurs PDF, la FSFE fait un travail général de sensibilisation, depuis 2010, sur la publicité pour des logiciels propriétaires faite sur les sites d'administrations publiques. Notre pétition pour le retrait des publicités pour des logiciels propriétaires des sites web publics a été signée par 80 organisations, 58 entreprises et 2438 particuliers. À ce jour, nous avons contacté 2104 administrations publiques et réussi à fermer 552 bugs (26%). Plusieurs ministères, municipalités et d'autres administrations ont retiré cette publicité ou ajouté des références supplémentaires vers des logiciels libres pour lire les PDF.

Nous allons continuer de corriger les bugs restants. Cependant, nous avons reçu de nombreux commentaires des administrations publiques et d'autres institutions et établissements publics. L'une des plus grosses tâches est d'améliorer le site web de la campagne PDFreaders puisqu'il constitue notre outil principal de campagne. Pour le mettre à jour et lui offrir une interface plus agréable pour l'utilisateur, nous avons besoin de vos dons.

À l'aide de vos dons, nous pourrons implémenter les nouvelles fonctionnalités que nous avons prévues pour notre site web avec comme date butoir le 1er février, puis nous maintiendrons le site.

Si nous parvenons à collecter plus d'argent, nous recontacterons les administrations restantes et les informerons de nos progrès pour qu'elles puissent arrêter de promouvoir des lecteurs de PDF propriétaires. Tous les dons supplémentaires seront utilisés pour payer les dépenses d'envoi et d'impression.

La page de la levée de fonds utilise la plate-forme Ulule. Vous pourrez y retrouver les différentes récompenses, une esquisse du nouveau site web et des mises à jour sur notre progrès.

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UK takes major step towards competition, innovation in software market

The UK government has released a new Open Standards policy. FSFE welcomes this document as a major step towards more competition and innovation in the UK software market

"With this policy, and in particular with its strong definition of Open Standards, the UK government sets an example that governments elsewhere should aspire to",says Karsten Gerloff, President of the Free Software Foundation Europe. Under the new policy, effective immediately, patents that are essential to implementing a standard must be licensed without royalties or restrictions that would prevent their implementation in Free Software.

Exit costs are another issue where the policy represents significant progress. In future, when UK government bodies buy a software solution, they have to include in the price a calculation of what it will cost them to get out of this solution in the future. This is perhaps the first time that a government has made this long-standing demand of FSFE an explicit policy. It means that government bodies cannot simply avoid buying Free Software solutions because they are locked into one particular vendor's proprietary file formats.

"Open Standards are really a choice between free competition on the one hand, and leaving the market to a few big players on the other hand. It's great to see that the UK government puts the country's interests first, and refuses to be constrained by the bad old ways of doing things", says Gerloff. "This policy will open up the market and remove barriers to entry, promoting innovation and competition.

Experience in other countries shows that achieving real change in the way the public sector buys software will be hard. FSFE therefore believe that the UK government would do well to take advantage of this opportunity and put even greater emphasis on increasing the use of Free Software in the country's public sector. This is an area where the UK still lags behind many other countries by a long margin, and much effort will be required to catch up.

Further analysis by FSFE:

• Analysis: The UK's new Open Standards policy
• FSFE Open Standard definition:
• FSFE submission to UK Open Standards consultation:

Find more about the UK Government Open Standards policy

• UK Government: Open Standards Consultation documents:
• UK Government: Open Standards Principles:
• UK Government: Open Standards Consultation: The Government response:

Contact information

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Moving our public administration towards trust, facts and confidence

Otto Kekäläinen, the Finnish FSFE country team coordinator, gave a talk in Berlin about the case regarding some of the major cities in Finland, which are considering using LibreOffice.

As he stated during his speech, which was part of the Berlin 2012 LibreOffice Conference "I assume most of us don't like the idea of paying taxes to governments so that they then spend them on closed source software and ship truckloads of money to the USA, Ireland or some tax heaven. Also I assume the idea of denying local business opportunities and limiting the governments own freedoms in computing is not anything any politician has on their agenda."

That was the situation in Helsinki, Tampere and Turku, where there have been city council initiatives to increase the use of LibreOffice and other Free Software. How ever none of these initiatives has so far been executed out.

Kekäläinen asked himself and the audience, why is there not everybody starting to use LibreOffice now when several pioneers, among others the Ministry of Justice in Finland, have shown it is both economically and technically a good move. He concluded that one of the reasons is Microsoft: "I am not trying to be politically correct, when we speak about LibreOffice and it's competitors, there is really only one enemy, and that is Microsoft", Kekäläinen said. As it was to be expected, he gave his reasons for making that statement, as well as several documented and referenced examples to conclude that the LibreOffice community has failures in communication. For example the success cases are not well documented, while Microsoft excels at public communications. And, in particular this company uses the fabricated Total Cost of Ownership calculations to claim that moving to LibreOffice is not economical, despite all government organizations that have made the move report significant savings, up to 70%.

Finally, Kekäläinen urged the LibreOffice community to resist the Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt tactis used by Microsoft by spreading trust, facts and confidence.

The presentation is available for download:

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Internship opportunity at FSFE

Are you willing to do something to improve our society? Do you think that our society development relies on a fair and transparent digital sphere? Do you want to increase our society's freedom? FSFE has one internship position available, starting February 2013. We are looking for bright, motivated, innovative people who want to make a real difference towards a free information society. Apply.

Do you want to join us but your background is not computer science? We are working at the political, educational, legal level: our labour is at the point where technology, society and politics meet. So whether your background is political science, law, communications... we welcome your application.

"FSFE is a multidisciplinary non-profit organisation where you will be improving your skills and acquiring new knowledge at the same time you feel you are really helping to make our world a better place. And they are willing to hear your new ideas and opinion" (Ana Galán, Intern 2012)

-> Apply now

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