Guideline for contacting public institutions and asking them to remove proprietary advertisements from their website

Making governments or public institutions change their website can be a long process. First of all, please keep in mind that your request will probably be the first of its kind for most institutions, and the person you are speaking or writing to may have no idea what you are talking about. In all your communication, it's very important that you remain polite, calm, and persistent. Shouting won't get you anywhere, ever.

We want public institutions to remove the advertisement for non-free PDF readers because public bodies should not ask their citizens to use non-free software. They should not distort the market by expressing a preference for a particular vendor. If they want to point people to download documents, they should offer them in a vendor neutral way and provide several options, for example in linking to pdfreaders.org.

We also want to use this opportunity to explain to public institutions the advantages of Free Software, particularly the fact that it keeps them and us free from vendor lock-in. This leaves both public bodies and citizens free to choose the software they prefer, and in the long term lowers the public sector's IT costs.

How to get involved:

Here's a step-by-step guide to getting involved:

• Tell us: If you want to help contacting the institutions, please send us an e-mail telling us in which country you wish to contribute, and how many institutions you think you can contact. We will then assign you a list of institutions, and send you the PDF versions of the letters to be sent. This way we avoid contacting the same institution twice. This saves work for everyone. Just send a mail at pdfreaders@lists.fsfe.org with the word "PDFcontact" in the subject line.
• Prepare the letter: We will send you a PDF file of the petition and of the letters to be sent. Please state in your mail whether you want to contact the institution in your own name, or if you'd rather send the letter on our behalf, using the address of FSFE's Berlin office. Print both files. Stick everything in an envelope and mail it to the institution.
• Remain available for contact : The institutions will probably have questions. If you have given sent the letter in your name, the questions will be directed to you. We have prepared a list of the most likely ones in our FAQ. If you are unable to respond to a question they are asking you, send us a mail or contact us by other means. In any case, try to be as helpful and patient as possible with the institutions, and be ready to explain to them the basics of Free Software, and why they shouldn't advertise proprietary software.
• Check and remind: If/Once you get the confirmation by the institution that it has removed the advertising or added a link to free PDFreaders, take the time to go to their website and make sure that they've got it right. Check not only on the page that was reported, but on the whole website. If there are still advertisements for proprietary PDF readers, please contact them again, thanking for the effort and asking for them to be coherent in their policy. If the institution hasn't responded to you after one week, please give them a phone call or send them an e-mail asking what became of your letter. Again, remain polite, friendly and calm at all times.
• Report your success: Once the institution has removed the advertisements or added also a link to free PDFreaders, send them a mail to thank them. Please also send a mail at pdfreaders@lists.fsfe.org so that we can add a closing date for the bug. Progress will be documented on the list of reported institutions.