Share your operating system bundling tales with the EU

Berlin / Paris, April 14th 2011 — FFII and AFUL ask consumers affected by operating system bundling or businesses involved in bundling to provide their evidence to the European Competition authority.

“My choice is Debian GNU/Linux”, explains FFII Vice president Rene Mages. “Why have I been compelled to pay and erase Windows 7 at purchase time?”

The European Commission admits it was aware of the difficulties encountered by consumers who want to purchase a PC with a non-Microsoft operating system or without any operating system at all. But they also say they lack evidence suggesting that this is the result of practices in violation of EU competition rules.

“We want to crowdsource the collection of evidence”, says AFUL’s President Laurent Séguin. “If the EU finds anticompetitive agreements that foreclose competition or abuse a dominant position on the relevant market, that would be a magic bullet.”

Commission contact

Submission Form: Information on competition problems affecting consumers

Contact

FFII Office
Malmöer Str. 6
D-10439 Berlin
+49-30-41722597
Fax Service: +49-721-509663769
office at ffii.org
(German/English)

Laurent Séguin,
Président de l’AFUL Paris,
+33 (0)6 63 94 87 16
laurent.seguin at aful.org
(French/English)

Alain Coulais,
Racketiciel workgroup AFUL Paris,
+33 (0)6 20 61 43 66
alain.coulais at aful.org
(French/English)

Benjamin Henrion
FFII Brussels
+32-484-56 61 09 (mobile)
bhenrion at ffii.org
(French/English)

About FFII

The FFII is a not-for-profit association registered in twenty European countries, dedicated to the development of information goods for the public benefit, based on copyright, free competition, open standards. More than 1000 members, 3,500 companies and 100,000 supporters have entrusted the FFII to act as their voice in public policy questions concerning exclusion rights (intellectual property) in data processing.

https://www.ffii.org

About AFUL

The French speaking Linux and Libre Software Users’ Association (AFUL) aims to promote libre software and open standards usage. AFUL is a non-profit association that gathers users, professionals, companies and other organizations based in more than a dozen French-speaking countries and regions (France, Belgium, Switzerland, Quebec, French-speaking African countries, etc.).

A recognized voice, AFUL is present in many exhibitions, conferences and meetings. In particular, it has an active role against OS bundled sales (Workgroup against bundled sales, racketiciel.info petition, comparative computer vendor list bons-vendeurs-ordinateurs.info), in favor of interoperability (AFNOR member, participation to Interoperability and accessibility Referentials by DGME, formats-ouverts.org website, etc.), as well as on issues concerning Author Copyrights.

http://www.aful.org

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