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The Free Software Pact is a simple document with which candidates can inform the voting public that they favor the development and use of Free Software, and will protect it from possible threatening EU legislation.

The Free Software Pact is also a tool for citizens who value Free Software to educate candidates about the importance of Free Software and why they should, if elected, protect the European Free Software community.

Free Software is worth protecting because it offers a way for European computer users to reclaim the essential freedoms that proprietary software denies them. There are four of these freedoms:

  • to run the program as you wish
  • to study the source code and change it to do what you wish
  • to redistribute copies
  • and to distribute your modified versions.

With these freedoms, the users are in control of the program. Without them, the developer controls the program, and indirectly controls its users.

Since 2007, the French association April has sensitized candidates to political elections about Free Software related issues through the Candidats.fr initiative (http://www.candidats.fr). The Candidats.fr initiative was part of the presidential and legislative campaigns in 2007, and continued during the 2008 campaign for city and department elections. Today 72 signatories are members of the French National Assembly.

The European Parliament is the venue for crucial talks for Free Software, from software patents to interoperability, through the neutrality of technology and networks. It is therefore vital to convince candidates in the 2009 European elections to sign the Free Software Pact.

Through civic initiatives and the Free Software Pact, and with the help of the mobilization of many members of the community, we aim to persuade candidates to make a commitment in favor of Free Software, and ensure that the next European Parliament will defend it.

For the European elections, here are Belgium Raw Data from the official sites.

The wiki to manage and follow all questions related to candidats.be in Belgium is http://wiki.april.org/w/CandidatsBe

[edit] Form letter

If you wish to write to your MEP(s), but you aren't sure what to say, you can use our Form letter.

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