Hello John,
* John Sullivan johns@fsf.org [2011-02-28 11:33:40 -0800]:
Richard asked me to get your assessment on the reaction of US public institutions to the PDFreaders letter http://www.fsfe.org/campaigns/pdfreaders/letter.en.html.
Sorry for the delay in replying to this. I think the letter is reasonably appealing to a US audience. I do think it would benefit from also saying that it's both misleading and against the government's mission to make it appear as though people are *required* to use one particular company's product to access public information. That may be a more persuasive argument for people in the US than just the advertising by itself.
Ok, thanks. If we would prepare a short text how individuals can help to get rid of non-free advertisement worldwide, would you include that in your next newsletter?
Also, talking about unfair "subsidies" is a popular way to criticize this type of behavior in the US. Something like, "Giving users the impression that they must download Adobe Acrobat in order to access your agency's information amounts to a government subsidy for Adobe."
Yes, we will also follow up on those questions with politicians in some European parliaments.
Regards, Matthias