Paris, 12 March 2013. Press release.
The CNDP (National Centre for Educational Resources), together with the “Café pédagogique” (Educational Café) is organising the “Digital Tour de France for Education”1. This series of events is officially defined as “a 20-legged tour of the French Hexagone aiming to discover the best digital projects serving education”, but actually is a promotional tour to the benefit of Microsoft, the sponsor of both the events and the Café pédagogique2. April and Framasoft request that this initiative be seriously amended, in order to make proper allowance for Free Software and free educational resources. Neither public servants —labelled as “innovative” by God-knows-whom— nor a public educational service can provide moral and pedagogical backing to an event which, as a side effect, will be instrumental in locking students and staff into a closed, proprietary ecosystem with the help of state money.