FSFE UK calls for removal of Government's software advertisements

[FSFE]

= FSFE UK calls for removal of Government's software advertisements =

[permanent URL: https://fsfe.org/news/2011/news-20110809-01.en.html]

This weekend Free Software activists will find and report web advertising for 
proprietary software that is being funded by the British Government. Activists 
will meet on Saturday  at Manchester's 'MadLab' [1] Hackerspace to hunt for 
new adverts and contact government departments requesting that they be 
removed.

The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is hosting a UK focused event in 
Manchester as part of its PDF Readers Campaign [2], which has called upon 
Europeans to seek out advertisements for proprietary PDF readers on their 
government's websites in an effort to get them removed. PDF readers are 
computer programs which allow Portable Document Format (PDF) files to be read 
by the user. PDF is an Open Standard [3], and although Free Software PDF 
readers exist for all major operating systems [3], government publications 
typically advertise only one vendor's proprietary reader.

"Every time that state websites link to non-free applications and encourage 
visitors to use them, they needlessly ask citizens to throw away their 
freedom", says Karsten Gerloff, President of FSFE.

The Campaign, originally launched late last year, has already resulted in more 
than 2,000 European institutions being contacted and 421 adverts being 
removed. In Britain however there remains a lot of potential, with only 41 
institutions reported so far. In Germany, some 10% of the over 550 
institutions contacted in the course of the campaign have already removed the 
adverts.

The campaign is targeting advertising which gives an unfair advantage to 
whichever proprietary product is recommend, and which are often accompanied by 
inaccurate statements presenting the application as the only available option.
FSFE's UK Coordinator Sam Tuke comments: "Free Software advocates in other 
parts of Europe have been very successful in making the information about PDF 
files more accurate on tax-funded websites. Currently however Britain is one of 
Europe's worst offenders, with nearly all contacted institutions having ignored 
our requests, and many more adverts remaining unreported."

1. http://madlab.org.uk/content/stamp-out-the-ads-free-software-pdf-reader-
sprint/
2. https://fsfe.org/campaigns/pdfreaders/
3. https://fsfe.org/projects/os/
4. http://pdfreaders.org/

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