Translating the text of the petition

Attention!

This page contains the petition text. But to sign the petition, please visit this page.

If you wish to contribute comments or translations for this petition, please join us : discuss@racketware.info. The initial version is the French version. The English version is probably very close.

Fields to be translated

What change do you want?

Computers in the post-Snowden era: choose before paying!

Who can make this happen?

The authorities worldwide

Why is the petition important?

When you buy a computer, a telephone, a tablet-pc, etc., you make your choice first, and then you pay. But meanwhile, quite often you first pay the licence of an operating system (Microsoft Windows, MacOS, etc) which you then choose to use or to replace with another one. As a result, the vast majority of us all use the operating system that mainly beneficiates from this forced sale. Our addiction is so high that even those actors that should be neutral in principle help this situation continue: state, administration, school, city administration, etc. We are thus technologically very dependent, hence vulnerable. Thanks to Edward Snowden, it is now established that intelligence agencies modify hardware (computers, routers, firewalls, etc) and software (Microsoft Windows, probably all Apple operating systems, probably one GNU-Linux distribution, etc) to massively listen to communications and illegally penetrate into computers. In such a context, the least thing for consumers is to have the choice of the software they want to install or use (from the BIOS/UEFI and the operating system up to additional software). In other words, for operating systems and other software too, one must be able to choose before paying.

More information: http://no.more.racketware.info/en/index

Organizations that promote this petition: http://no.more.racketware.info/petition/support

What is the text of your petition?

When we buy a computer (desktop, laptop, telephone, tablet-pc), we want to always be able to choose our operating system before paying for it. We also want to keep our entire choice of hardware whatever our choice for the operating system, otherwise the competition between operating systems will remain biased. If operating systems or application software are pre-loaded, we want to have all relevant information prior to purchase: detailed price, licence text. We do not want any lengthy procedure in case we refuse a licence. To warrant that the detailed price is sincere, we want to be able to purchase the licence alone at the same price as that mentioned alongside the computer. For operating systems to be on equal footing on the market, we request that it be forbidden to distribute software or hardware technologies that annoy the average consumer during installation or use of other software or operating systems. For the same reason, we request that manufacturers of new hardware components be required to publish and maintain full relevant information for driver development. We request that the legislative and administrative authorities and competition agencies of our countries and groups of countries transpose our requests into law, and enforce this law.