{"id":2447,"date":"2013-07-29T11:16:13","date_gmt":"2013-07-29T11:16:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/xislblogs.xtreamlab.net\/slwoods\/?p=2447"},"modified":"2013-07-29T11:19:07","modified_gmt":"2013-07-29T11:19:07","slug":"fsfe-object-to-claims-of-free-softwares-predatory-pricing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/?p=2447","title":{"rendered":"FSFE objects to claims of free software&#8217;s &#8216;predatory pricing&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/23\/2013\/07\/fsfe.png\" alt=\"FSFE logo\" width=\"150\" height=\"81\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-2448\" \/>In a recent anti-trust submission to the European Commission, a coalition led by Microsoft falsely claimed that the distribution of free software free of charge hurts competition. <acronym title=\"Free Software Federation Europe\">FSFE<\/acronym> <a href=\"http:\/\/fsfe.org\/activities\/policy\/eu\/20130729.EC.Fairsearch.letter.en.html\">has written a letter<\/a> to the European Commission&#8217;s competition authorities to refute this claim and point out that free software is critical for an open, competitive IT market.<\/p>\n<p>In its letter, FSFE urges the Commission to consider the facts properly before accepting these allegations at face value. &#8220;Free software is a boon for humankind. The only thing that it is dangerous to is Microsoft&#8217;s hopelessly outdated, restrictive business model,&#8221; says FSFE president Karsten Gerloff.<\/p>\n<p>In essence,the so-called &#8220;FairSearch&#8221; coalition is asking the European Commission to favour a restrictive business model over a liberal one &#8211; exactly the opposite of what competition regulators should do to achieve a fair and open market.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Free software is not about price, it&#8217;s about liberty, a guarantee of competition and vendor independence. Asking to cripple free software in order to allow proprietary vendors to sell their locked-down systems is just absurd&#8221; says Carlo Piana, FSFE&#8217;s General Counsel. &#8220;The most substantial threat to competition in the mobile space today are software patents, and we have repeatedly urged anti-trust authorities to address this problem,&#8221; he adds.<\/p>\n<p>FSFE is asking the European Commission to dismiss the &#8220;FairSearch&#8221; coalition&#8217;s unfounded claims on predatory pricing and not make them part of whatever steps it decides to take in response to the group&#8217;s filing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a recent anti-trust submission to the European Commission, a coalition led by Microsoft falsely claimed that the distribution of free software free of charge hurts competition. FSFE has written a letter to the European Commission&#8217;s competition authorities to refute this claim and point out that free software is critical for an open, competitive IT [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":20,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,15,9],"tags":[19,12,20,23],"class_list":["post-2447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-open-source-software","category-politics","category-tech","tag-free-software","tag-open-source","tag-politics-2","tag-tech-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/20"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2447"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2447\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2452,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2447\/revisions\/2452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.slwoods.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}