Paris, February 17th 2010 Press release.
April is happy to announce the election of its new board [4]1 which shall be headed this year by Tangui Morlier.
Member of the board since 2007, Tangui Morlier [5] has been an active member of the Free community since 2001. Active member of Copyleft Attitude 2 and of StopDRM 3, he joined April in 2006 by participating in the actions against the DADVSI law. For the last two years, he had been in charge of the Companies/Economy topics within the board.
"After these five years heading the association, it appeared to me important for April to help new abilities to come out" stated Benoît Sibaud, former president of the association. "Of course, I shall remain an active player in the association, especially through my work on the board."
"I hope to continue the work lead by Benoît during the last five years. When he became president, the association only had 500 members and it had no full-time emplpyees. He is leaving behind him an incredible result: April can count on over 5,000 members and the hiring of 3 full-time employees ensures the sustainability of its defense and promotion missions regarding Free Software. The fact that Benoît remains in the board and that he accepted to assist me as Vice President is very important for me" declared Tangui Morlier.
Beyond the change of presidents, the team's renewal is illustrated by the arrival of François Poulain as Treasurer and of Lionel Allorge as Executive Secretary, as well as the arrival of Rémi Boulle, Annaïg Denis, Alexis Monville and Rayna Stamboliyska. In order to comply with the statutory maximum number of members on the board, Tony Bassette (founding member of April), Estelle Falcy, Éric Leclercq and Jérémy Monnet left the board. We heartily thank them for the excellent work they have done within the board.
April promotes and defends Free Software since 1996. From 1999 to 2009, without failing to its missions of promotion of Free Software, April has been very active in informing on the dangers of software patents, digital rights (mis)management or filtering/sniffing solutions. The year 2009 has been especially rich, as demonstrated by the moral report [6]: HADOPI [7], FreeSoftwarePact.eu [8], participation to the Fourgous mission [9],... The year 2010, from the perspective of political news [10], should allow this renewed team to finally put back into balance its efforts and put more forward the activities of the association around Free Software promotion.
Regarding April
Pioneer of free software in France, April is since 1996 a major player in the democratization and the spread of Free Software and open standards to the general public, professionals and institutions in the French-speaking world. In the digital era that is ours, it also aims to inform the public on the dangers of an exclusive appropriation of information and knowledge by private interests.
The association has over 5,300 members, using or producing Free Software.
For more information, you may go to the following website: http://www.april.org/ [11], contact us by phone at +33 178 769 280 or through our contact form [12].
Contacts
Tangui Morlier, President, tmorlier@april.org [13] +33 681 880 298
Benoît Sibaud, former President and current Vice-President, bsibaud@april.org [14] +33 681 181 130
- 1. April's board was elected during April's general assembly on February 13th 2010
- 2. artlibre.org [15]: " Copyleft Attitude aims at promoting and raising awareness around the concept of copyleft in the field of arts or others. Use as a model what has been done around Free Software to adapt it to artistic creation. That is why we have conceived the Art Libre License. "
- 3. http://stopdrm.info/ [16] is a citizen group that was mobilized against the French DADVSI law