Currently we are working on a brochure for our Public Money? Public Code! campaign, that we like to use as a help for politicians and decision-takers. The brochure shall help to clarify common misunderstandings about Free Software, show positive use-cases and of course the multiple benefits of using Free Software. One of these pages shall counter the claim that private actors cannot compete against Free Software published by the state, financed with public money. Find more information below or directly join the discussion in English or German on the FSFE Mailinglists.

One of the pages in our brochure about Public Money? Public Code! shall be dedicated to the topic “market distortion / anticompetition”. The point is that a main argument against publishing publicly financed software developments under a free licence is said to be “market distortion”. The argument says that private actors cannot compete against “software offered by the state free of charge” and therewith these publications are to be seen anticompetitive. On the other hand we use to argue that in fact Free Software fosters competition because there are a way less dependencies in the Free Software and Open Standards world.

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