Toulouse becomes the first large French city to join April

Toulouse, Saturday 22 October 2011, press release.

April is delighted to announce the arrival of the city of Toulouse as a member of the association. In order to ascertain the city's desire to promote Free Software, the town council has decided to formalize its commitment to the principles we defend.

This membership follows the repeated commitment by Pierre Cohen, Member of Parliament and mayor of Toulouse, towards Free Software. This includes especially his signing of the Free Software Pact 1.

The public signing of the Toulouse's membership2 was held on Saturday 22 October 2011 within the "La Novela" festival, during the Toulouse Numérique (Digital Toulouse) event3, in presence of Pierre Cohen, MP and mayor of Toulouse and of Sébastien Dinot, Vice President of April.

Sébastien Dinot, Vice President of April, presents the membership form to Pierre Cohen, mayor of Toulouse and President of the urban community of the Greater Toulouse area.Credits: Patrick Dumas. License: CC BY SA.

"This membership is a token of the efforts done by the city of Toulouse to develop the share of Free Software made available to its employees, and of its desire to open the city's public procurements to Free solutions. By becoming a member, the city of Toulouse intends to extend the attentive network April implements to protect the development of Free technologies." declared Pierre Cohen.

"A true Free culture exists in Toulouse. By living daily with Free technologies, these public institutions, these companies, these research centers, these associations and these simple citizens all constitute a significant potential for innovation and economic development. I am delighted that the councilors and the city employees are becoming aware of this and that they support April on the eve of its new fights." stated Sébastien Dinot.

The urban community of the Greater Toulouse area have recently published a tender to migrate Toulouse's office tools to Free Software4. It has also launched its Open Data portal5 on which the urban community's data is published under the Free ODbL license.

"Toulouse's membership, as the sixth public community6 to have joined us, is a strong signal. Free Software is not only for small institutions, associations or cities. Each citizen, regardless of where he lives, has an interest in the creation of a context that is favourable to Free Software. We therefore encourage all the public communities to follow Toulouse's example and to promote greater freedom and transparency through Free Software." said Frédéric Couchet, April's Executive Director.

The Free Capitole (Capitole du libre), a major event in Toulouse on the subject of Free Software, will be held on November 26 and 27.

• 1. During the 2007 parliamentary elections and the 2008 city elections
• 2. The decision to become member had been voted during the city council's meeting on June 24, 2011
• 3. The third "La Novela" ("the festival of shared knowledge") was held in Toulouse between the 7th and the 23rd of October 2011. This festival is organized around ten themes. One of these is called Toulouse Numérique (Digital Toulouse) and is held on the last four days of the festival (between October 20 and 23). It aims to be the forum of the players and the users of digital technologies. It is within this context that both associations April and Toulibre were invited to hold a booth/workshop on Free Software during Saturday 22 and Sunday 23 October 2011, in the nave of the Musuem of Modern and Contemporary Arts "Les Abattoirs", which welcomed the event this year.
• 4. See the text of the tender
• 5. Seehttp://data.grandtoulouse.fr/
• 6. The other member public communities are: the Île-de-France region, the towns of Grigny (69), Pierrefitte-sur-Seine (93), Pont-Audemer (27) and Yerres (91).