mchauvet's Quotes

Bravo to APRIL for its tenth birthday. You lead a fight that I believe essential to our freedoms, perhaps even for our civilization. ( read more )

For 10 years April has been conducting substantive work that is essential to the existence of our company. Without its endless willingness to explain the issues of the sector, without their determination to preserve a healthy competition in the software market, Mekensleep would have thrown in the towel long ago. In France, no association represents Free Software and its values better than April

April plays a fundamental role in promoting the use of Free Software within the government, the industry and education. Quality alternatives to proprietary software exist, and thanks to April's efforts, we know more about them. AdaCore also benefits from its participation in the network of people and companies sharing a common vision that constitutes April.

In the last years, April has been one of the most active players in promoting Free Software, and it has also been deeply involved in all discussions related to open formats, DRM and the French DADVSI law. Our recent membership in April is a way for us to provide our support and gratitude to all actions undertaken by this association and to affirm our commitment to promoting open standards and Free Software (of which Java is now a part) of which APRIL is the most ardent defender.

The work of April is essential for the promotion of Free Software, because it contributes to the democratization of Free Software through actions aimed at the general public, provides the necessary vigilance against threats such as DADVSI and encourages companies who choose Free Software. The latter, which has a reputation of poor quality and of absence of cost, has the advantage of re-balancing the relationship between suppliers and customers. This business model now just needs to be popularized and perpetuated.

INL is a society which is deeply involved in the field of Free Software: like all players on the market, we use many Free Software and we try to bring more wealth and innovation. Our innovative project NuFW, which won several titles and is supported by Anvar, is licensed under the terms of GPL.

We believe that April is the key player to represent us, and INL is of course a member of April. April has, in our view, the legitimacy to represent the players of the Free Software community, from the aficionados student to the service company or the publisher, including the independent developer.

We believe that April plays an extremely important role in the French Free Software ecosystem. Its main actions, advocacy and promotion, are essential for us. Even if we are not always in perfect agreement with some ideas, joining April allows us to participate to the debate and push it forward, in order to maintain this technical and economic model viable and reliable. For example, for a company such as ours that is heavily promoting a European technological independence, April's actions in favor of open standards are a tremendous support.

In France April plays a unique role for the promotion and defense of Free Software and its various stakeholders. Computer freedom is a societal issue and it is essential today more than ever to support it by joining April. I encourage all computer freedom loving citizens join now April.

The information technologies are too new for society to really understand the underlying issues. It will take time, even a generation, for everyone to understand how the digital revolution is impacting our every-day lives and the organization of society. If you had asked a contemporary of Gutenberg how printing could change society, he would not have imagined the newspapers, magazines and books in general circulation; at most he would have imagined copies of manuscript amongst the elite who used them at the time. Today is the same with information technology and especially with Free Software.

During the last decade, I was often given to meet April on the steep roads leading to software freedom. Browsing through parallel channels, our efforts have enabled the emergence of new collaborative models and have demonstrated its effectiveness. Today we all work, OW2 as April, to strengthen sustainably ecosystems that are based on unconstrained sharing of software, which are critical artifacts for the Information Society. And I am sure that in the future we will continue together to ensure that these new paths laid out by the pioneers remain large open.