Hello everyone,
As I don't who receive the mail, I am speaking in english althought it is not my best language, so please excuse me for the mistakes. I discover the petition in order to detect the web site of the European government/institution which does not respect their neutrality obligation. I approve that and so I sign the petition but 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. You could find below the sentence (as in english as in french) ; for me it is the last part of the sentence which is libellous.
EN :
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
FR :
D’autres alternatives propriétaires au lecteur de PDF d'Adobe existent, mais tout comme pour ce dernier, leur fonctionnement interne est un secret commercial et aucun de ces programmes ne respecte votre vie privée ou la confidentialité de vos données. page web : http://www.pdfreaders.org/index.fr.html
As I know principle and philosophy of Free Software, and also PDF Readers as Acrobat Reader but users too, your web site must explain and prove what it is bad in these software (How Adobe do not respect our own privacy and what Adobe are doing about these stolen information). Personally, I do not know what information are stolen and I'm interesting to know them.
Thank you to take notice about my request and I hope you could improve this page with my remark. I'm ready to help you if you want more information about my mind. Best Regards, B. Chomel
Has he received a reply?
Regards, Matthias
* Bernard Chomel bchomel@gmail.com [2010-10-12 15:35:15 +0200]:
As I don't who receive the mail, I am speaking in english althought it is not my best language, so please excuse me for the mistakes. I discover the petition in order to detect the web site of the European government/institution which does not respect their neutrality obligation. I approve that and so I sign the petition but 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. You could find below the sentence (as in english as in french) ; for me it is the last part of the sentence which is libellous.
EN :
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
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
Sam,
Firstly, thank you for your answer.
On 27/10/2010 16:38, Sam Tuke wrote:
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
One of those pages[2] describes the four Freedoms that Software must grant in order for it to be Free Software:
OK, I know the 4 freedoms defined by the FSF and R. Stalman and also what are the proprietary software limits for us ; I'm agree with it, no problem.
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.
OK, proprietary software do not allow to know how the data are used by the software.
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."
But I did not agree with your conclusion; you can't tell about proprietary software do not respect your privacy/data because you don't know how the data are deal with the application. If you find that the software transmit some of our data to the editor or another organization, OK I can tell : This software don't respect my privacy. To check that, you can inspect the traffic between you and the internet thanks to a sniffer, a firewall.... For me, your sentence is libellous and not objective. I think it is not correct to tell that because you badly extrapolate. It is not like Google who use your privacy data to advertise you, to keep lots of data about your life or Facebook... I repeat, I'm OK to inform people and denounce the risks/limits of proprietary software but you don't have to lie to others because you become incredible. I think there are already many arguments to prove the benefits of the free software compared to proprietary software to extrapolate with false information. Due to I'm not agree, I can't and won't promote your campaign.
I sincerely hope you understand my arguments and discuss about them with other people from the FSF and I hope you modify the arguments to denounce the true problems. Besides on the campaign against the european administration which promote the Acrobat Reader, I don't need of the false argument : Administration must be neutral !
Regards, B. Chomel