The European Parliament is discriminating against EU citizens by using software which is not freely available to everyone for its digital services, according to the open source community. But Parliament cited technical and security reasons to justify its decision.

Several free software associations yesterday (21 May) launched a petition calling on the European Parliament to use open standards in order to provide all EU citizens with "non-discriminatory" access to its representatives and documents "irrespective of software choices".

The petitioners explicitly refer to the live web streaming of the European Parliament's plenary sessions, "which is currently only available to those using Microsoft's MediaPlayer". They argue that by using exclusive non-interoperable software, the European Parliament is not allowing all citizens to follow its work and is obliging them to buy software from a single company.

This "ICT lock-in" is deemed to be "in conflict with the first article of Chapter 1 in the Treaty of the European Union, which stipulates that 'decisions are taken with the greatest possible respect for openness and as near as possible to the citizens'," reads the petition.

A Parliament press source told EurActiv that the use of open source software is avoided by MEPs because it is perceived as less secure against hackers. On the other hand, the technical support provided by the selected software companies is considered highly important to carry out digital services in the 23 official languages used by the Parliament.

The European Commission uses open source software for a range of activities. Linux is used for server operating systems and the external blog platform is based on free programs, like for its wiki service and for the eVoting polls. At the same time, the Commission uses software from Microsoft and Oracle to run other services.

Alongside the petition to the European Parliament, the pro-free software Digital Standards Organisation (Digistan) yesterday (21 May) signed the Hague Declaration , which calls for open standards to be used in all government procurement.

The same day as these initiatives were launched, Microsoft announced that it will improve the interoperability of its flagship Office software suite with open standard formats. The move comes as the European Commission is carrying out an extensive investigation on Microsoft's alleged abuse of its dominant position in the EU market.

Background

The European Parliament has endorsed EU research on open source software but has never applied it to its digital services. Meanwhile, the Commission uses a range of free software on its blog platform and for other IT activities.

The Commission officially supports the development of open source software. In a recent study commissioned by a UN research centre, the EU executive outlined the economic importance of free programs for European enterprises

See: Euractiv News 22/5/2008 for more information.