-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Press contact: Stefano Maffulli Tel +39 347 1493.733 Christopher Gabriel Tel +39 347 7784.862 Free Software bill comes to the Italian Parliament. Under the official name of "Standards regarding pluralism in information technology, the adoption and spreading of free software and the portability of computer-generated documents in Public Administration", sen. Fiorello Cortiana of the Verdi-l'Ulivo parliament group has submitted the bill to the Italian Republic Senate [1]. The objective of the law is to favour the adoption of free software by public administration, in order to enhance the information services management of the Italian State. It also promotes the adoption of non-proprietary (and thus universally available) file formats, for all documents issued by public administration. Free software in public administration is playing an increasingly important role around the world. Among others, Great Britain plans the compulsory adoption of free software in the public field [2]. Reliable software development with free accessible source codes represents a central role in the eEurope initiative by European Commission [3]. The Florence municipal administration has approved a motion for the adoption and spreading of free software by Public Administration [4]. The German Parliament recently announced it plans to found its technological infrastructure upon GNU/Linux [5]. "This is a great initiative, which if approved, will boost the national economy concerning software and related services, while improving security, interoperability and cost-effectiveness of information technology in public administration, leading to significant benefits for Italian citizens", stated Simo Sorce, Italian developer of the project Samba , the free software which enables communication between Microsoft and UNIX-like systems. Stefano Maffulli, Free Software Foundation Europe spokesman, also praised the initiative: "This bill will bring the advantages of the GNU system to public administration . Our system, well-known above all thanks to GNU/Linux, its mostly widespread variant, provides users the freedom to run, modify, distribute software, restoring them the very rights that are so often taken away through the use of common user licenses. At the same time, it creates common ground for real competition on the information technology market, based upon open and documented standards. I hope that this bill will be discussed in the Parliament without prejudice". "The Associazione Software Libero (Free Software Association) supported the bill proposed by sen. Cortiana right from the early drafts. The spreading and development of free software will have certain and fast effects on economy, competition and market transparency", said the chairman of the association, Simone Piccardi, praising the entry of the bill into Parliament. References: [1] http://www.senato.it/leg/14/Bgt/Schede/Ddliter/16976.htm [2] http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/documents/OSS%20Policy%20draft%20for%20public%20consultation.pdf [3] http://europa.eu.int/comm/information_society/eeurope/documentation/index_en.htm [4] http://www.comune.firenze.it/consi/softwarelibero.htm [5] http://www.bundestux.de/ About Free Software Foundation Europe: Free Software Foundation Europe is the sister association of Free Software Foundation, founded in 1985 by Richard Stallmann to provide juridical, logistic and economical support to the GNU project, the software system constituting the infrastructure of the Linux kernel based systems. At this time FSFE has branches in France and Germany; upcoming branches in Italy, Portugal, Spain. References: http://www.fsfeurope.org/ About Associazione Software Libero: Associazione Software Libero is a non-profit entity with the goal of spreading of free software in Italy and ensuring correct information on this subject . It is the only Italian associate organization for Free Software Foundation Europe. References:http://softwarelibero.it/ About Samba: Samba is a pool of applications providing access to SMB/CIFS protocol network shared file system and printers. Samba enables the replacement of Windows NT/2000, OS/2 Warp, NFS or Netware server with a UNIX-like one. Samba is free software released under GNU GPL. References: http://www.samba.org/ -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Processed by Mailcrypt 3.5.6 iEYEARECAAYFAjybH9YACgkQpTA1sien861l+QCfdZZuA3QDDKCGHoPtsRDRmNRy XAQAnAxgvegmqN8/gp91qdlLSuJ3GEVV =8pJ/ -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----