This petition is jointly submitted to the European Parliament by OpenForum Europe (OFE), The European Software Market Association (ESOMA) and The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE). The signatories are encouraging citizens and other stakeholder groups to publicly support the objectives of the petition.

Who we are

OpenForum Europe (OFE) is not-for-profit, independent of any organisation and was launched in March 2002 to accelerate, broaden and strengthen the use of OSS in business and government. OFE pursues the vision of an open, competitive European IT market by 2010 in line with the European Commission i2010 Strategy with the mission of facilitating open competitive choice for IT users.

Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) The FSFE was launched on 10 March 2001 and supports all European aspects of Free Software; especially the GNU Project. We are actively supporting development of Free Software and furthering GNU-based Operating Systems such as GNU/Linux. Also, we provide an assistance centre for politicians, lawyers and journalists in order to secure the legal, political and social future of Free Software.

The European Software Market Association (esoma) The Esoma is the voice of the independent IT firms, professionals, and consumers. Founded in January 2007 by the FFII, a non-profit organisation dedicated to the removal of barriers to competition in IT and largely responsible for the rejection of the EU software patent directive in July 2005, Esoma promotes healthy practices on the software market through three main activities :

• conducting research on issues that affect the software industry, keeping track of important initiatives, events, and debates that affect IT policies ;

• preparing policies, together with its members and other organisations, to address these issues ;

• communicating and guiding decisions makers to implement its proposals ;