FSFE launches Free PDF Readers campaign

The Fellowship of the Free Software Foundation Europe is proud to
announce its latest initiative: pdfreaders.org, a site providing
information about PDF with links to Free Software PDF readers for all
major operating systems.

"Interoperability, competition and choice are primary benefits of Open
Standards that translate into vendor-independence and better value for
money for customers," says FSFE president Georg Greve. "Although many
versions of PDF offer all these benefits for formatted text and
documents, files in PDF formats typically come with information that
users need to use a specific product. pdfreaders.org provides an
alternative to highlight the strengths of PDF as an Open Standard."

The coordinators of pdfreaders.org, Hannes Hauswedell and Jan-Hendrik
Peters, are pleased to present the latest revision of the site with
short and compact information how users can seize the full benefits of
both Open Standards and Free Software.

"Free Software gives us control over the software we use, and Open
Standards give us control over our data and allow implementations by
many different groups," explains Jan-Hendrik Peters. "We wanted to
show that with the Portable Document Format people can have both."

Hannes Hauswedell adds: "Similar to a Free Software project we started
off with an idea, provided a first implementation, received lots of
feedback, and worked that into a better version of the site. We are
grateful to all the people who got involved. This was a collaborative
effort that would not have been possible without all the contributors."

"The site offers buttons in several languages that we encourage
everyone to put next to PDF files offered on their sites," explains
Matthias Kirschner, FSFE's Fellowship Coordinator. "We hope that in a
year from now, no PDF is offered without the vendor-independent
alternative buttons of pdfreaders.org."

http://www.fsfeurope.org/news/2009/news-20090202-01.en.html