Bernard,
Thank you for sharing your concerns with us about our PDF readers campaign.
On Tuesday 12 October 2010 15:35:15 Bernard Chomel wrote:
in the page which explain and suggest some free pdf readers, we can read a sentence which is not neutral and I find it especially libellous because any source/proof is mentionned
Other proprietary alternatives to Adobe's PDF reader also exist, but like it, their internal working is a trade secret and these programs do not respect your right to control your own privacy and data. web page : http://www.pdfreaders.org/index.en.html
On the page which you quote[1] you can find more information about the differences between Free and non-Free software, in addition to several links to more details on fsfe.org.
One of those pages[2] describes the four Freedoms that Software must grant in order for it to be Free Software:
# The freedom to run the program, for any purpose.
# The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs.
# The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbour.
# The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits.
Proprietary software such as Adobe Acrobat Reader, does not grant users these freedoms. Acrobat Reader, and other proprietary alternatives, are therefore not examinable by you and me. We do not have their source code, we do not know how they work, and we do not know what they do with our information.
The only way for us to guarantee that an application is respecting our privacy is to examine its code. Since we can't do that for proprietary applications, we cannot control how our data is used. By keeping their source code secret, proprietary applications do not respect our right to control how our data is used.
This is the nature of non-Free Software. You can verify it by trying to understand what a proprietary PDF reader does with information that you submit to it. You will not succeed. This is what we mean when we say "their internal working is a trade secret and these programs do not respect your right to control your own privacy and data."
If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to ask us.
Thanks,
Sam.
1. http://pdfreaders.org/ 2. http://www.fsfe.org/about/basics/freesoftware.html