Update on June 3rd, 2009: the campaign started a few months ago was concluded by a success on June 3rd 2009, thanks to the 2,500 members who joined us. Many thanks to all of them, and to all those who have been invested in supporting and communicating on our campaign (see below). It was an ambitious goal, and it is only thanks to the small (or big) help of everybody that we have managed to reach it. You can read the Benoît Sibaud's thanking message [5] (president of April) as well as the 2009-2014 roadmap [6] presenting our ambition and our thoughts for this new step in our development and our actions.
[7]
To promote and defend even more Free Software, April is launching this November 12th 2008 a membership campaign with the support of Tristan Nitot (president of Mozilla Europe), with the goal of strengthening April representativity and its means of action. April wishes to reach at first 5,000 members by the end of 2008. April needs your support now [8].
"Freedom to learn, share, put technology at the users' disposal: few organizations manage to explain what is Free Software; even fewer manage to defend it. April is leading that struggle, and I support its action by joining it. I encourage everybody to join as well, as it is our freedom in the digital era which is at stake." Tristan Nitot, president of Mozilla Europe
"VideoLAN encourages its French users to join [8] April. April supported in the past VideoLAN from the beginning of its adventure as Free Software. April's action, whether against laws jeopardizing Free Software or for the defence of the GPL license, is supported by VideoLAN's team"
Support Free Software, join April!
Numerous players of the Free Software world as well as April's partners have had the opportunity over these last years to attest the importance of the association's actions [9]. The "Lutèce d'Or" prize it received is an illustration of this.
A recognized action
April received in September 2008 the "Lutèce d'Or" jury's special prize [10] as a demonstration of the work accomplished since 1996, and an encouragement to continue in that direction.
This prize awards the recent actions [11]around the promotion and defence of Free Software, which April led (raising awareness of the French politicians with the Candidats.fr [12] initiative, participation to well-known French shows such as "Service Public" and "Le Téléphone sonne", success of the annulment request in front of the French State Council [13], publication of its white-paper on Free Software business models [14], participation to the "Assises du Numérique" [15]...), but awards also the fact that April has become a reference player for the politicians, members of government and economic decision-makers, from which April is devoted as much attention as for consumer associations.
In only a very short period of time, the number of April's members has quadrupled - over 2,500 new members, including a hundred companies, eighty associations and two local institutions. Before the kick-off of its previous membership campaign in 2007, April had 715 members and 2 full-time employees. The success of the 2007 campaign also allowed to strengthen the team of full-time employees (already including Frédéric Couchet, Executive Director since March 2005, and Eva Mathieu, Executive Assistant since October 2006)) with the arrival of Alix Cazenave, Public Affairs Officer.
This award represents an encouragement to continue with different campaigns, regarding raising awareness of the general public and associations, the European Parliament's will to migrate to Free Software solutions, the 2009 European elections or the defence of Free Software and of its players against software patents, Digital Rights Managements (DRM), bundled selling of computers and software.
The association is launching a new membership campaign, with the goal of strengthening even more our means of action and our legitimacy. Joining April doesn't force you to become an active member of the association, but with thousands of members, April shall receive more easily appointments to meets representatives and the government. Thanks to subscriptions, which constitute our main source of revenue, April will be able to pay its full-time members and hire the necessary people for its actions and the evermore complex issues it is working on.
The goals of the membership campaign are
- finance our actions;
- hire new full-time employees;
- increase April's representativity and thus its influence towards public authorities.
April has today over 2,500 members including over 100 companies, 80 associations and 2 local authorities. The target of the campaign is to reach at first 5,000 members by the end of 2008.
Do like Tristan Nitot and the other members of the association:
- join now the association [8]
- encourage others to join us [16] by promoting the membership campaign
Join April now [8]