The Open Parliament petition
ciaran
|
17. abril 2008
|
A few weeks ago, FSFE co-launched
the Open Parliament
petition, along with Esoma
and OpenForum Europe.
Here's a summary of why we're asking you to sign it, and we hope
you'll point others to it.
The focus of this petition is to ask the European Parliament to
review their policies for choosing software and for publishing data.
We'd like the elected politicians to be able to
choose free
software and we'd like data to be published
in open
standards.
The online petition is not part of the official petitions process
inside the European Parliament, but it is a way to show that this
issue is important. On the openparliament.eu website you can
see the text of the
petition.
This text was written for the official internal
petitions procedure of the European Parliament. It avoids technical
details and it focusses on referencing related projects instead of
making detailed requests. As far as I know, this is the normal
style for petitions. Some studies will be done to define the
details. FSFE is explicitly mentioned in the petition, so we will
be involved in the process to ensure it does it's job of removing
barriers to the use of free software.
The open standards aspects are important because when the European
Parliment publishes videos in proprietary formats, they are
pressuring EU citizens to use proprietary software.
In March, we made
a joint
press release and held a press conference in the European
Parliament with MEPs David Hammerstein and Eva Lichtenberger. (Old
friends from
the anti-swpat
campaign.)
--
Ciarán O'Riordan,
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This document is in public domain
