[Associations] Presenting April, episode 1: the great battles

The Story of April, Episode 1

Welcome to all of you for this new episode of Projets Libres!.
Today, we are going to start a series of several episodes to tell and talk about the actions of an association that you have certainly heard about, this association is April, the association for the promotion and defense of free software. If you’ve been around Free Software in any way, chances are you’ve heard of this acronym before. So we’re going to know a little more with our two guests of the day, in this first episode, about the great fights of April, quite quickly about its history. We’ll go into a little more detail about some episodes and what April is now in future episodes.
For this first episode, I’m really happy to have Jeanne Tadeusz with me. The second person is Frédéric Couchet.
Jeanne and Frédéric, welcome to the podcast Projets Libres!, delighted to have you with me today.

Frédéric Couchet: Thank you Walid for the invitation.

Jeanne Tadeusz: Thank you Walid, delighted to be here, with you, and to discuss Free Software. Back to the roots for my part.

Presentation of Jeanne

Walid Nouh: Precisely, back to the roots for your part, I’m going to start with you, Jeanne. Could you first explain to us who you are and your background, please?

Jeanne Tadeusz: Jeanne Tadeusz. I’m here because I worked at April between 2010 and 2016 as a public affairs manager.
To summarize my background, I graduated in 2009 in law and political science. I went to work in the United States, in San Francisco, at that time on the issue of human rights. Being in California helped me, in the end, to become aware of the importance of all the digital issues, even if this word obviously has limits, of everything that was fundamental freedoms. When I returned to France, I learned that April was recruiting and it was finally a way to continue my work, my commitment to human rights and fundamental freedoms issues on an issue that, at the time, was still quite new and not very seen, at least by the activist circles in which I was.

Walid Nouh: Did you discover April while you were in the United States or when you came back to France?

Jeanne Tadeusz: When he returned to France. To be exact, I discovered free software in the United States. I started to understand all the issues that were around free software but also Internet neutrality, etc., in the United States and, when I returned to France, finally a bit by a combination of circumstances: April was recruiting, it corresponded to my desires, to my personal commitment and that’s how I met April and we went a long way together.

Walid Nouh: Before I give the floor to Fred, can you please explain, for those who don’t know, what public affairs are?

Jeanne Tadeusz: Public affairs is everything that is the link between the person for whom we work and the elected representatives in the general sense, so both the government and the local authorities can also be the Parliament. To be responsible for public affairs is ultimately to go and bring the good word, in this case that of April, to these people, to explain to them what are the stakes, for April, of the various laws they are voting on or the texts they are considering adopting, on the contrary those that they do not adopt. Being a decision-maker today means working on a lot of subjects, you can’t know everything. Being responsible for public affairs means building a bit of a bridge between issues that interest us, to which we are personally committed, in this case free software, and these decision-makers.

Walid Nouh: Subsidiary question: was it a logical next step for you or was it a big challenge compared to what you had done before?

Jeanne Tadeusz: It was a big challenge. Until then I had worked in institutions, and then I returned to an institution with many more people, more organized, more structured. At April, it was something else because an association, a small structure, being the only English-speaking one, it was immediately a great challenge at the time. At the time, Fred.

Presentation of Frédéric

Walid Nouh: Fred, I’m going to call you Fred for the rest of the interview, because you’re called Fred all the time.
Fred, before you introduce yourself, I would like you to explain why you hesitated to do this interview. We must tell our audience that you hesitated, that we talked about it at some length, could you come back to that, please, to explain your position a little?

Frédéric Couchet: I’m going to answer you already by introducing myself very quickly, by saying that I am one of the co-founders of April in 1996, we’ll come back to the history later, and I’m currently its general delegate since 2005, so, if you calculate correctly, it’s 29~ years and 20~ years. I was the main spokesperson and a few years ago I made the decision to no longer personally intervene at public events or interviews for the benefit of other people, to allow other people to intervene. Even if on the public affairs aspect Jeanne and Étienne, who has now taken over from her, intervened, at many conferences, many interviews, it was me who stuck to it. And this is simply to allow other people to be able to intervene, increase their skills and increase the diversity of the people involved in April. That is the first point.
The second point is that, since you’re doing several episodes, this one is devoted a little to the history, we have a difference of opinion on that, Walid. I think that history is mainly of interest to a few people fond of anecdotes and that what motivates people to join a structure or what will mobilize them is rather what is happening today and the April of today is not the April of 20~ years or 25~ years ago. That said, there will be other episodes in which today’s April will intervene, my colleague Isabella, President Bookynette, Étienne, that’s why I hesitated. In addition, my role is becoming more and more secondary in this evolution and that’s fine. That’s why I hesitated, but, in the end, I accepted anyway because I’m obviously the one who knows the history of April best.

Walid Nouh: I’m going to ask you to introduce yourself and also tell us what it means to be April’s general delegate?

Frédéric Couchet: I studied computer science at Paris 8, so in Saint-Denis. That’s where I discovered free software, in the 90s, so a long time ago. There, in the computer center, the principle was “you are there to learn, so you have access to the source code of many software programs that are used, you have access to the Internet on which you can retrieve free software”, that’s where I discovered this notion of free software, you could download software. So I did my studies, in the end, with a lot of free software. I didn’t have a background as a computer scientist, I’m not a geek like many people at 15/16~ years old or even earlier. I thought it was great, as a computer scientist, to be able to access the source code, to see how it works, to correct it. And then a fundamental meeting, also at Paris 8, with a teacher, Marc Detienne, who often spent nights with us. You should know that at the time there were relatively few machines available and I didn’t have a computer at home, so, with a few friends, we spent our nights at the jar, at the computer center of Paris 8 to work on our projects, etc. There was a teacher who came by often and who started to explain to us what free software was, how it works, etc. That’s how I learned computer science. We may come back to this later on the history of April and I will explain why, when we left university, we created this association.
To answer your question succinctly, what is a general delegate? In fact, it simply means that in my employment contract I have a delegation from the board of directors to carry out many actions, so, in absolute terms, I organize the association on a daily basis. Afterwards, on the subject of actions, I will speak on the two axes that we will talk about later: the institutional axis that Jeanne mentioned, public affairs, advocacy, and the defense of the cause; I also intervene on the promotional actions that we will talk about a little, but that we will probably talk about much more in the next episodes; I also do a lot of technical work, system administration because we don’t have a paid admin-sys in the April team, in the salaried team, and, as I am still a computer scientist, I intervene from time to time on this part.

The creation of April

Walid Nouh: All right. Thank you.
Very logically, I would like us to talk about the creation of April. What need does it meet? Why did you create it?

Frédéric Couchet: We created it in 1996. We were five students at the time, I mean students, five men. We had spent a few years studying together, based on free software, spending nights together, so, at the end of our studies, we were all wondering what we were going to do. We didn’t have the entrepreneurial/economic fiber, because we could have created a company around free software, at the time there were very few that existed, unlike today, we didn’t have that fiber at all. On the other hand, we had more of a publicity fibre, an associative fibre. At the time, there were no real organizations that promoted free software in France, in the United States there was the Free Software Foundation which has existed since 85, so we said to ourselves “we are going to create an association that will aim to make free software known.”
To be completely clear, we created it without a roadmap, without knowing exactly what we were going to do precisely, we created it with five people, but the idea was: we learned computer science based on free software, we think it’s great, we want to make it known both to people who do computer science and to the general public. That’s why we created it in 1996, we were five students or former students of Paris 8, but with a rather particular vision: even if we were computer scientists, we had nevertheless become aware that it was not only a technical or economic issue, it was a societal issue. We had become aware of this both through our exchanges with the teacher I mentioned earlier, Marc Detienne, and also through our reading of the website of the Foundation for Free Software and the GNU Project, a founding project of free software. So we realized that it was something that went beyond the purely technical part. When we talk about Jeanne’s actions later, especially her arrival, the fundamental freedoms aspect that she had put in, for example, in her cover letter spoke to us right away.
That’s why we created April. After that, there were some developments that we can come back to.

Walid Nouh: At the beginning, there wasn’t necessarily a political message behind it, but there was already a message to get across to as many people as possible and promote a model of society.

APRIL’s major developments

Walid Nouh: Now, you’re talking about the fact that at the very beginning you were volunteers. In the evolution of April, this is my next question, its major evolutions, so there was a moment when you went from volunteers to some who became salaried employees. Can you explain these few very important changes to April? We can detail some of them later or they will be detailed in other episodes.

Frédéric Couchet: Yes, absolutely, quickly.
At the end of 1996 we created the association, there are five of us and, as I said, it’s really a promotional axis, we want to make people known and we’re going to carry out actions.
First we create a website and the first thing we start to do, quite simply, as we want to make free software known, we say to ourselves that we will put online explanatory texts on free software and, rather than writing them ourselves, we will translate into French the explanatory texts of the GNU project and the Free Software Foundation. This is the first working group we have created : to provide documentation and explanations in French.
Afterwards, at the beginning of 1998, we did a first event at Paris 8, a day of presentation around free software, which was open to the outside public, but, overall, there were still mainly people from the university and a few people we knew.
We were carrying out actions, like that, we did a few things. We were still starting to gain a little notoriety and, in 1999, someone came to see us and said: “That’s what you’re doing, but do you know what’s going on at the European level at the moment?” We didn’t follow that! At the European level, there was a draft European directive on the patentability of software, i.e. the idea of protecting ideas and not simply putting these ideas into practice, implementing them in IT. He told us that this could pose such and such a problem for free software, we will have to mobilize at the European level. We asked what we could do to help.
This is how, from 1999 onwards, we began to participate in a coalition aimed at explaining the dangers of this draft European directive.
Afterwards, at the French level too, things happened, particularly in the 2000s, the transposition of the Copyright Directive, which aimed to sanctify what is called DRM, i.e. digital handcuffs which, for example, organize a device for controlling the use of your computer tools, whether DVDs, music, etc. etc. So here, the same, we have always mobilized in volunteer mode.
Of course, we immediately put information online to allow anyone outside the association to contribute.
Luckily, I had employers, including a project manager who was quite nice, who gave me a lot of freedom in organizing my time. It is important to know that, for the institutional part, you have to go and see parliamentarians and it is during the day, it is not necessarily in the evening, that the study of bills takes time, etc.
Until 2004/2005 we made this rise in power, in parallel with promotional actions, because when we also did promotional actions, we participated in events, etc., for example the World Free Software Meetings, professional events or events for the general public such as the Fête de l’Huma and, next to that, there was the institutional part.
At one point, in 2004, we said to ourselves “it’s becoming very complicated to do everything on a voluntary basis on the institutional side, plus we’re not “professionals”, in quotes, advocacy”, so we said to ourselves that we had to think about what we could do: do we just do promotional actions and forget about the institutional side or do we try to do both? We told ourselves that we had to defend ourselves so that we were going to try to do both.
We started thinking about a method of financing and we said, “If we can convince people to support us, maybe we can hire people.” So it was in 2004 that we started to explain to people “become a member of April, our funding model is exclusively membership fees and, if we can, we can hire.” In the hires, we had the objective of having a full-time person on the institutional aspects, so the person in charge of public affairs. In the internal reflections, at the level of the board of directors, the question of the first person to be hired arose. It so happened that at the time I had just left Alcôve, which was one of the main free software companies, that I was between two things, between two activities, it happened that after a certain number of discussions, exchanges, we said to each other “why wouldn’t you be the first employee of April to the position of general delegate, to take care of the promotion and the institutional part, with the aim of being able to hire a second person quickly? »
From a date point of view, I started in March 2005 and basically, in October 2006, we had the first person in charge of public affairs and, in October 2006, we also had a second person who helped with the promotion aspects. Here are a few dates.

Walid Nouh: So Jeanne, when you arrive, in the end there is everything to do.

Jeanne Tadeusz: It had already started since someone arrived in 2006, there were two people before me in this position. I took over from someone else, so everything was not to be done and fortunately, there were already solid foundations and, in addition, Fred was very present, knew well, had also worked with the person who was in charge of it before, if only for the whole contact aspect, because, obviously, these are positions with a lot of interpersonal skills, A number of almost personal exchanges, somewhere. You really have to know the people, know their habits, know who to talk to, etc. So I arrived at something that existed, but at a time when the association was on the verge of evolving, because there was a very militant aspect, which still is, very invigorating, in a kind of battle. When I was there, there was also a will, as I went along, to come back perhaps more on the promotion aspect and not just on the defense of free software, perhaps because the context was different at that time, which does not prevent us from also having important defense actions, obviously. We really started on both legs at the same time to move forward.

Frédéric Couchet: Maybe I can clarify. What Jeanne says is very interesting. It’s true that the period before Jeanne, the first public affairs position was 2006, there was, we can mention them because they were very important, Christophe Espern for a while and then Alix Cazenave. It was a period when Free Software was attacked, not necessarily directly, but by software patents, by digital handcuffs, DRM [Digital Rights Management], by Microsoft talking about cancer, etc., so it’s true that it was more about defensive actions on very broad subjects, for example the copyright directive was not only about DRM, it concerned many things, and the actors who were on the other side were, for example, the Sacem [Society of Authors, Composers and Music Publishers] for music, the SACD [Society of Dramatic Authors and Composers] for authors, etc. These are people with considerable means, here we can really talk about a fight, remembering that at the time we were two employees at April, volunteers helped us, but it was really in terms of fighting, we tried to defend ourselves so as not to lose things we had.
When Jeanne arrived, for software patents we had already won because there was the rejection of the directive in 2005, the copyright law in France was voted, from memory, in April/May 2006, something like that, so she arrived at a period that was less of a struggle and, Precisely, it also allowed us to get back to the promotion aspect that we can talk about later, in particular the public authorities aspect, public policies in favor of free software, digital sovereignty, etc. She arrived at a time when it was less of a struggle and also with a different style, that is to say that in the management of public affairs the style of the person plays a role.
As she also says, just to finish, contacts are important in public affairs, that is to say that many things are at stake at the level of relationships, we may have the opportunity to talk about this later. People undoubtedly have a very negative image of politicians, we met, I don’t know what expression I could use, people who think more about their careers and their personal interests, but we also met politicians who have a sense of the general interest and that’s something that was really great in our advocacy actions.

Walid Nouh: So Jeanne, when you arrive, April is already known to political decision-makers. There have already been battles, it is already an actor who has been identified.

Jeanne Tadeusz: It is already an actor who is identified by some, but not by all. Afterwards, and this is still the case today, by nature there is a lot of renewal of political staff, so there is always work to be done.
I completely agree with what Fred was saying, I arrived at a time when we were no longer in the free software cancer for computing as it could have been in the early 2000s; the existence of free software was a little more acquired, let’s say in a very global way, in the political system, names like Firefox or others were starting to be known to the general public, there was at least this aspect. On many things, Free Software was indeed endangered, but let’s say that the attacks were no longer so frontal, we were no longer in a struggle for existence, in the end they were more trying to suffocate us than to say that we were fundamentally bad.

The Free Software Pact and candidats.fr

Walid Nouh: So how did the idea of putting a little more attention back on the promotion part translate at that time? What are the actions you do to promote?

Jeanne Tadeusz: There have been several. One that worked a lot, that had been launched a bit before my arrival, that I was able to continue, that actually worked quite well, that we called Candidats.fr. The goal was, with the volunteers of the association, to contact as many candidates as possible in all the elections, simply, already, to talk to them about free software, to tell them that it exists. In the end, it’s a first step, it’s the way to launch a first contact. It’s particularly interesting to work with volunteers because, especially in the regions, it allows, for regional elections but also elections to the National Assembly, for example, that it is voters from the riding who speak to them, it obviously carries more weight. Simply to talk to them about free software and also to ask them – not all of them did it, but many did anyway – to commit to free software by signing what was called a charter where they already committed not to harm free software and ideally, perhaps, also to support it.

Walid Nouh: I remember Candidats.fr very well. Is it an original idea that you had through your reflections? How did you come to Candidats.fr?

Frédéric Couchet: I can answer because I was there.
Initially, we said to ourselves “we met a lot of politicians at a time of struggle, that is to say at a time when these people are elected, what would be good is either to meet them, or at least to raise their awareness even before the elections”, so Candidats.fr took two forms. We were simply inspired by what Nicolas Hulot proposed at the time, I think, who proposed an Ecological Pact or something like that. We called it the Free Software Pact, a one-page document, very simple, as Jeanne says, where the candidates already committed not to harm free software and even, eventually, to promote it. It was very much based on the local mobilization of volunteers to contact the candidates.
The first edition was for the 2007 presidential election. For the presidential election, we said to ourselves that we were not going to make a simple pact. We said to ourselves that in the teams of candidates there were people capable of answering a more detailed questionnaire and above all, we wanted commitments or answers on all the subjects that interest us.
With the public affairs officer at the time – 2007, it must have been Christophe – and volunteers, we developed a fairly long questionnaire that we sent to all the candidates’ teams. From memory, in 2007, there were 12 candidates and I think the first 8 responded, including the president-elect afterwards, Nicolas Sarkozy, and his answer to the questionnaire was the worst of all, let’s be clear, there were no surprises about what he was going to implement in relation to free software or the Internet. In any case, the people in the candidates’ teams had taken the time to answer the questionnaire in real detail.
We renewed that, of course, for the next presidential election, and then the Pact for Free Software for all the local elections.
The inspiration for the questionnaire was in fact that there were other people, other structures that made questionnaires. The idea was really to raise awareness beforehand, to have their position before. And we didn’t comment on the answers, that is to say that we published the answers and then people, depending on the answers, would be able to position themselves on their choice, knowing of course that the answers to the questionnaire Candidats.fr was only one of the elements of voting for a person.
It continues to this day. We no longer make questionnaires because we realize that the teams of candidates no longer answer this kind of questionnaire, on the other hand, we continue the Free Software Pact for local elections, even if it doesn’t work as well as in 2007, 2012, 2017, etc.

Walid Nouh: I guess for you it also has the advantage of knowing in advance what to expect when a candidate arrives. When Sarkozy is elected, you know exactly what to expect and, basically, what actions, what can happen.

Frédéric Couchet: Yes, absolutely.

Jeanne Tadeusz: Yes, absolutely, and this is an advantage, especially at the local level. At April, we were only a few employees, there were volunteers involved in the field, but having elected officials or future elected officials who take the trouble to exchange with us, to respond, it also allows us to identify potential relays, people with whom we can, perhaps, exchange beforehand. We also had to make ourselves known, because, sometimes, we weren’t necessarily well identified by newcomers in the political field and to be able to create links with people we wouldn’t necessarily have created otherwise.

Frédéric Couchet: It should also be noted, so that people understand, that at the level of the National Assembly and the Senate , a lot is at stake on a very small proportion of people for bills. Sometimes the TV shows us armoured chambers where parliamentarians vote, but in fact in the day-to-day work, there is work that is done in committees, in the hemicycle, etc. In committee, there are a few people who work on these subjects and, in each political party, there are referent people. So, even identifying these referents takes time. The advantage of the questionnaire was that we could identify some of them beforehand, with commitments, and then we would go back to them and tell them “you have been elected, you have signed the Free Software Pact. There is, for example, a bill that arrives, we have amendments to correct this or that thing or, on the contrary, to improve this or that thing” and it is still very effective. We really have to remember that in Parliament it is not much to play for, sometimes a single person can change a bill if we manage to convince him and especially to identify him.
So even if parliamentarians may know the name of April, we, on the other hand, sometimes discover people who are mobilized on subjects. Recently, for example, we were contacted by a deputy we didn’t know, who discovered us through our initiatives and who happens to be an MP who uses a free distribution on his computer. We discussed what could be done.

Walid Nouh: I had two questions. The first. Does talking to you about volunteers represent a lot of people? Are they very diverse people? That is the first question.
The second question for Jeanne. You spent your time trying to find these people to talk to, to have relationships with them and to get the messages you wanted to get across. Is that right?

Jeanne Tadeusz: Maybe I’ll start by answering the second question, if you don’t mind Fred, if you don’t mind Walid.
In the end, my work was indeed both aspects. We have to talk to these people a lot, but we also have to prepare what we are going to say, so also a lot of work upstream, for example when a bill is tabled, from the outset start studying it, starting to see what could have implications for free software. Fred was talking, for example, about proposing amendments. We still have to come up with an amendment that is ready, that is drafted, to be sure that we are not making a mistake. There was also this whole aspect of legal research, of legal analysis beforehand, which represented a large part of my time.

Converges with other players

Walid Nouh: Were you all alone or was it more a collection of people, associations?

Walid Nouh: OK.
On these subjects, did you involve other people? Is it only April who responds or could you have made a kind of coalition with other people who defended more or less the same subjects?

Jeanne Tadeusz: Of course, we always work in collegiality with the volunteers, with the general delegate, with the board of directors. Afterwards, I was recruited because I was a lawyer, so for this expertise, in the end, on the legal aspect.

Jeanne Tadeusz: It can happen. We were able to work with other people, I’m thinking in particular of La Quadrature du Net, in my time we worked together regularly, especially on ACTA [Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement]. They were the spearhead, we worked a lot with them, we supported them a lot because, in the end, we were on the same fights and on the same line. We have been able to work with other structures, for example, on patent issues, we have been able to talk with other associations, perhaps larger. We were able to work with the Confédération paysanne because the question of patentability, the patentability of living things, is linked to the issue of the patentability of software.
So as soon as we had this possibility of having a convergence in terms of activism, of course we seized it and, on the contrary, it was very interesting to be able to make these links. We too, as a structure, have learned a lot of things, for example by working with the Conf and I dare to hope that this may have made them think a little about the digital issue.

Frédéric Couchet: To complete and answer your question about volunteers. On patents, for example, we also had a lot of discussions with Act Up-Paris when Emma Cosse was the president. As Jeanne has just said, the topic of patents is much broader than just the software issue and often, in addition, we have the same players in front of us, that is to say that we often find ourselves with the same people. When we worked on the copyright directive, we also went to see people who might have converging interests, in particular artists, performers, for example, who were not necessarily in favour of DRM or others. We have indeed worked a lot in coalition. For the software patent directive, which I mentioned, many European structures were involved, so we were rarely alone on the subjects. On some subjects we were alone, that’s normal, but we worked a lot in coalition.

April’s volunteers

The second point, when you asked about Jeanne’s work, one of the difficulties is that it’s still a bit of a solitary job, a lot of things depend on the person who is in charge of public affairs because these are complex subjects. We are a small structure, we don’t necessarily have volunteers who want to go through the draft laws. From time to time, we come across people who have this ability. For example, on patents, I could mention Gibus, Gérald [Sédrati-Dinet], who is someone who worked on a voluntary basis on patents and who accompanied Jeanne a lot. There is also Sébastien Dinot, for example, I know that you recently interviewed him in Projets libres! to talk about governance. But it’s still a very solitary activity and during the game where we were mainly in defence, at the time more Christophe and Alix, it’s something that is, in addition, very tiring. When you have to slap up bills only in defense, with in front of you, people who will try to put you down, “you are geeks, you don’t understand anything”, it’s very hard humanly and in addition, when there are bills that are very important, the days get longer, it must be said, because it is day, night, etc.
On the volunteer side, to answer your question, in fact some volunteers help us on the institutional side, I just said it. After all, April’s mode of operation relies a lot on volunteers. When we decided that we were going to try to have a salaried team, we said to ourselves “we still have to remain an association where the volunteers are there, can act with the salaried team”, so this is the case in all April’s working groups. For example, in the working group that makes the transcriptions, Marie-Odile does a lot of work; for example, system administration, April’s servers are managed by volunteers; we may talk about the radio show Libre à vous! or the free services on the chapril.org site, they are volunteers. After that, it depends on the projects. For example, on the show Libre à vous!, from memory, there are between 15 and 20 volunteers who intervene, whether for columns, for the processing of the podcast, for the control room. We have remained an association, and that was really fundamental for us, which is a mix of employees and volunteers who are active and with a board of directors that plays its role as a board of directors. For us, this was fundamental, especially when the first employee is one of the co-founders of the association.

Other major actions

Walid Nouh: OK. If I come back to these major battles, we talked about software patents, we talked about the DRM part, about Candidats.Fr which is not a fight that is more about promotion. What are the major actions that you would like to highlight, explain to the listeners, either that have marked you personally or that are part of the somewhat founding things of the association?

Jeanne Tadeusz: I’m going to go back to things that I was able to work on when I was an employee at April, which seem particularly important to me because we still hear about them today, I think we can still see the ramifications very clearly, it’s something that continues, it’s the whole question of “Open Bar”/Microsoft in ministries and more broadly the use of free software in administrations. It was, for once, a fight that I had the opportunity to lead with April, a big fight; Free software, obviously, even beyond free software, a real question of sovereignty, a real question of independence which, I think, is perhaps even more topical today than it was then, but the fact is that having, within the Ministry of Defence, a Microsoft competence centre, which has access to all the computers of the ministry, Still, there is something that was extremely problematic, which still made a lot of noise. For us, it was a real work of investigation, meetings, exchanges, we worked a lot to obtain sources, to cross-reference sources, we made a fairly impressive number of CADA requests, we finally obtained documents that were concealed.
The CADA is the Commission for Access to Administrative Documents. The logic of the CADA finally starts from the Declaration of the Rights of Man of 1789: everyone has the right to ask admiration to be accountable, which means that all the documents of the administration, with some exceptions, can be communicated. Anyone, you, me, can ask for access to the documents of the administration. We used this possibility, which exists for everyone, as a structure to ask the Ministry of Defence to publish its call for tenders, there was none, and also its contract. Obviously, mentions can be redacted, they have the right to do so on the financial amounts, except that entire pages were found redacted without any legal justification, which could have led to a rather long fight to obtain all this information.

Walid Nouh: I came across the old videos of the time that plunged me back into all this. How do you hear about this “Open Bar” contract?

Jeanne Tadeusz: Through contacts. I think that’s the point, precisely, of everything that is public affairs in general

Frédéric Couchet: Sources.

Jeanne Tadeusz: We can say that we have sources, but we are involved in free software, other people are, we meet people whether it’s at events, at trade shows, whatever, we’ll exchange and then we’ll start hearing about something, we’ll try to dig a little deeper, we will try to go and see other people who are in contact, for example, with this administration, to take the example of the Ministry of Defence, and, as we scratch the surface, we start to get a few snippets. For example, we will make a request for an administrative document, we will see if something comes across, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, and that’s how it is. We also have sources that can possibly give us a certain number of elements.

Frédéric Couchet: Over the years, we have also developed relationships of trust with certain people in the administrations who have a highly developed sense of the general interest and who, for some, would transfer documents to us and say “look, I saw this, it seems scandalous to me, can you do something?” These are really important things. When I said earlier, we have met with political leaders who have a high sense of the general interest, in the administration too, in particular because there are people, on certain issues, who have been outraged by decisions that have been taken in disregard, in fact, of their own expertise.
Let me take an example. A few years ago, the Microsoft format for office documents was submitted to standardization at the international level with the idea that it would become a standard. In France, Afnor, the Francophone Association for Standardization, a public body, worked openly for a~year~and~a half or two~ years, we participated, there were people who were experts from the administration and at the end of these months of work, this expert working group said: “No, the format cannot be standardized, there are shortcomings, so Afnor must vote against”, it was the last meeting. And two or three days later, I don’t know, we learn that Afnor has decided to abstain and no one understands anything, that is to say no one understands why all of a sudden Afnor, and therefore the senior management of Afnor, decides to go against the recommendations of this working group. We learned a few months later, via a press article, that the decision came directly from the Élysée Palace, from the digital advisor to the President of the Republic at the time, Nicolas Sarkozy. This digital advisor, Frank Supplisson, has therefore ordered the management of Afnor not to vote against but to abstain. You can imagine that the people from the administrations, who had participated in this working group, were particularly outraged by this assault.
This is something that we have often had to deal with and that, I think, many structures like ours face in other areas. We are facing lobbying structures that are incredible, that is to say that in front of us it is Microsoft, it can be Google, it can be Apple, where others will have Total in front of them, etc. You fight with your means, sometimes you get positive results. In fact, being right does not guarantee winning, there is a balance of power. That’s kind of what we learned and, at first, it bothered us particularly. Now we have accepted the fact that there is a balance of power.

Walid Nouh: Jeanne, do you want to continue, otherwise I have a follow-up question on this?

Jeanne Tadeusz: No, it’s good. I think Fred summed it up very well. The balance of power is indeed real.

Frédéric Couchet: Just to finish on the Microsoft/Defense “Open Bar”, Jeanne didn’t say it, the press relayed this action a lot. It also did a lot for our reconnaissance work, that is to say that Jeanne was interviewed in particular in the program Le Vivinteur by Jean-Marc Manach who was doing a program on France 5 and, a few years later, a Cash Investigation was entirely devoted to this subject and this Cash Investigation only existed because we did this work, the journalist-director who did this investigative work came to see us and he did that. This case is also a bit special because it has contributed to the visibility of our action and it is also a kind of recognition of the seriousness of our action since very serious journalists such as the people of Vinvinteur or Cash Investigation have made it a subject.

The relationship with journalists

Walid Nouh: The question I wanted to ask was your relationship with journalists. What can we say about it, Jeanne?

Jeanne Tadeusz: In the end, we were an actor, a source of information for journalists with whom we could have to exchange. Obviously, as a structure that did communication, we had to regularly contact journalists to inform them of our various actions, which, I imagine, April always does. Afterwards, on hot topics, typically the Microsoft Open Bar, we were able to make a number of press releases that we sent to them, we also responded to their requests. I know that during the open bar periods, but also during the periods of struggle against ACTA, which we have just talked about, the anti-counterfeiting trade agreement, we were able to talk to a lot of journalists, spend time doing interviews, answering questions. It’s a job to raise awareness among journalists so that, in the end, they also discover the issues, because they too, obviously, work on a lot of subjects and then, indeed, try to get as much information as possible.

Frédéric Couchet: When we started, we took a starting position which was to try to publish everything we do and to put the links to all the references. That’s one of the criticisms that people sometimes made of us by saying “your stuff is illegible because there are references everywhere, it’s super detailed”, but it was deliberate. We wanted people who read our press releases, our analyses, to be able to make their own analysis if they wanted to. If we cited a bill, we put the link, if we cited an amendment, we put the link, etc. The journalists we worked with could therefore check what we were doing. It’s a guarantee of transparency, trust, and conversely, from time to time, we have been the source of journalists, but like many people. Today, an investigative journalist who has no sources cannot do his job, it works both ways.

Walid Nouh: OK. Jeanne, are there any other events, other struggles that you would like to highlight?

Jeanne Tadeusz: I think we have really seen the most important, the most significant, the most blatant. I don’t see any others. Fred, I don’t know if you see any others.

Frédéric Couchet: There have been many actions in which Jeanne has participated, particularly on public contracts, around education. There would be a lot of them, we could show two shows there, but it’s true that Candidats.Fr, Open Bar Microsoft/Defense and ACTA, which she mentioned, which was also a victory in the end, not only April, of many people, seem to me to be the essential.

Jeanne’s non-institutional actions at April

Walid Nouh: OK. Are there things, actions that are not institutional-oriented that you would also like to highlight, Jeanne?

Jeanne Tadeusz: As April’s external communication, not really, because my work at April was the purely institutional aspect. After that, I dare to say that we have also, while I was at it, evolved a lot as a structure, as an association. When I arrived, I was very committed, but I wasn’t an activist, I was committed in particular by my professional choices, in addition, I wasn’t a computer scientist, I wasn’t a geek at the base, I was more committed to the issue of fundamental freedoms, human rights really in an almost essential way. At the time, I arrived in a rather geeky association, if I may say so, and the cost of entry was not negligible.

Walid Nouh: Was it hard to get in?

Jeanne Tadeusz: It wasn’t hard because the people were extremely welcoming, I was very well received. Now the first few times, sometimes I didn’t understand everything that was going on in the room, let’s be clear, there is a small entry cost with the learning of the terms used, abbreviations, etc., as often, even in terms of computer tools, I was not a computer scientist, I had never done HTML, I arrived, I found myself posting on wikis and writing on the website in HTML, so yes, there is an entry fee. But it’s an association that, in this respect, has evolved rather very positively and that’s something I really appreciated. Whether it was the board of directors, whether it was Fred, in the end everyone was really in a process of inclusivity and not to scare those who didn’t know, who were non-geeks, to put it simply.
When I arrived with a slightly new look at this issue, there was a real listening and we really tried to work, in a way, to “de-geekize” April, in any case to make it more easily accessible and perhaps less worrying for the general public.
Finally, to explain that talking about free software is not just about talking about the software we use on our computer, to link this to essential questions today: the question of sovereignty, the question of privacy, the protection of our personal data, really develop this aspect of communication as well.

Frédéric Couchet: If I can also add to that, before Jeanne’s arrival we were in warrior mode somewhere, we were attacked, we defended ourselves. Jeanne arrived at a time in the history of the association when this was less the case because some battles were already either won or lost, in any case had passed. In addition, she arrived, as I said earlier, with her own style, her own interests, especially everything that is inclusive, diverse. Jeanne said earlier that it was a very geeky association, what she may not dare to say is that it was also an association that consumed, especially during parties or aperitifs, a lot of beers and peanuts, which perhaps had a vocabulary that was not at all inclusive, especially for women. I remind you that Jeanne arrived in 2010, it was historically an association where there were still a lot of men and who, at the time, were probably not yet deconstructed so they were making muddy or even dubious jokes or worse.
People who arrive at April are not given freedom, but they are told “bring what you want to bring”, it’s important. It was also the beginning of April’s evolutions, especially in terms of diversity, especially gender diversity. Very clearly she played a role in this, in fact April’s Diversity working group was created in 2006, something like that. I was looking at the statistics earlier, at the time of Jeanne’s arrival, the April board of directors must have had two women out of 17. Today, April’s board of directors is parity, five men, five women, April’s salaried team is also parity, in our working groups there are more and more women and the aperitifs, today, have also evolved. She clearly played a role in making us understand that if we considered that computer science was a societal issue, computer freedom a societal issue, we had to talk to society and not just to the white, bearded geeks who represented a good part of the association.

Walid Nouh: I don’t know if you want to complete, Jeanne.

Jeanne Tadeusz: Finally, there is an organic side to the association, which was created with computer science students and which had kept a little bit of this DNA of computer science students. I arrived, I was absolutely not and it’s true that there were a few moments of learning, indeed beer/peanuts, not everyone drinks alcohol, sometimes people want to eat something other than peanuts. So there was a whole period when Fred systematically also bought cherry tomatoes so that there was something other than peanuts at the table. Moments, too, when I explained “at the moment it’s the period of Ramadan, it’s better to put the meetings after the breaking of the fast, at least not in the middle of the fast, at least to accommodate some volunteers and without necessarily asking them the question, because it’s not necessarily nice to be put under the spotlight in mode, are you doing Ramadan?” No, we don’t ask the question, we see that he is not available, he says that it would be convenient for him not to do it between 6 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. We infer or we don’t infer. Or at least, if the others are ever eating and drinking, we may not insist heavily that he take something too. In the end, it’s a whole bunch of little things to make people feel more comfortable, more included. From memory, volunteers who didn’t drink alcohol also kindly explained to us that we had to stop buying cheap fruit juice, that if we had good beers we could also take a fruit juice that was correct for them. Lots of little things. To try to be more inclusive, I remember that at the end of my period we also developed computer exchanges to allow those who either lived far away or could not easily move around to be able to exchange and be really part of the April community and I think this is still the case. In the end, there are a lot of small concrete actions that I tried to bring and fortunately, and I’m delighted, I see that April has continued to try to decenter itself a little, to see a little bit the different types of people and their needs so that everyone feels welcome.
Just to finish, I think I was indeed particularly sensitive because I was a young woman, in her twenties, who arrived in a group of computer scientists. At April it was going well, I was able to participate in conferences or other where it’s not easy to be the only woman in a room of 50 people.

Frédéric Couchet: Just to finish on this because I know, Walid, that you like anecdotes, there are always cherry tomatoes, today we are making progress, we only buy seasonal fruits or seasonal vegetables. And on fruit juices, one day a volunteer told me “you piss off buying crappy fruit juices when you have good beers” and indeed I had never paid attention to that. So we try to progress, Jeanne played an important role in this and so did the people who followed.
And on the fact of being a woman in public affairs, I don’t know if today it has evolved a little, but at the time it was still something that was not necessarily obvious because in public affairs, especially in cabinets and others, it was often a lot of men, with a lot of testosterone, so you have to be able to impose yourself in that environment, It’s not easy.

Walid Nouh: Did you and Jeanne, at that time, communicate about these changes, precisely in terms of diversity, that there was April or was it something rather internal and you didn’t communicate too much about it externally?

Jeanne Tadeusz: Both. I’m not sure that we really did any communication for the general public. Now, in more free software-oriented events, for example, I was able to give a number of conferences on diversity to raise awareness of this issue. We also had a number of meetings, exchanges, sometimes for a very simple thing, but as it was our extremely minority case as women in free software, it feels good to be able to meet, to discuss, to share our experience and to feel less alone. We were able to do that too.
So not as general a communication as we could have, for example on the institutional part, but we tried to exchange, to share good practices. I arrived with a little background on the subject, but I didn’t pretend, in fact I still don’t claim to be a specialist in diversity and inclusion, so to see concretely and clearly what could work and to share our feedback with other structures was also very interesting.

Frédéric Couchet: Here we talk about gender diversity, because indeed in the computer world, especially free software, it is probably what is most visible, but we try to address diversity as a whole, in particular, for example, for many years, April’s official public events have been organized in places accessible to people with disabilities. This is not the case with our premises, we hope that the landlord will one day do some work. When we hold, for example, a general assembly in a place that is accessible, when we organize a public event, especially in Paris, it often happens that we have access to a place called the Charles Léopold Mayer Foundation for Human Progress, which is accessible, which is really very good. We try to address this issue of diversity as a whole. For example, in the radio show, it is also implemented in recruitment. Today, quite simply, people are wondering how to encourage the contribution of women or others, well it also involves vocabulary, that is to say that we have to be inclusive with the vocabulary, we also have to explain, in order to welcome as many people as possible, that there is not necessarily a need for strong expertise, that there will be support, It is even specified, in some documentation, that the accompaniment can be done by a woman if, for example, a woman wishes to be accompanied by another woman. I know that there are currently also discussions to relaunch single-sex exchanges within the association because it can be useful. It’s a work that is never finished, which is long-term, but which is essential and above all, you have to both have the desire to do it and spend time on it, that is to say that it must be integrated into the project and for us, today, it is integrated into the project that is April.

April’s working groups

Walid Nouh: There is something that has not been explained, that you have talked about several times, you have talked about working groups. Could you explain what these working groups are? Did they appear from the start? What are they used for? When did they appear in the work of the association?

Frédéric Couchet: From the beginning, when we created the association, we didn’t say to ourselves “only the people who are members of the association can contribute”. From the beginning we said to ourselves “anyone can contribute, whether you are a member of the association or not”. We have formalized an organization that is that a subject has his or her own working group, so, basically, there is one person or two referents and then people who will act and to whom we give resources. Historically, in 96, the main means was a discussion list and access to the website. Today, for example, it could be access to the April premises to hold meetings or others.
The working groups are a bit thematic. For example, there is a group that has thought a lot about free software in the associative world, there is a very useful and very effective Transcriptions working group , in particular with Marie-Odile Morandi who transcribes audio recordings or videos that are related to computer freedom; there is a Press Review working group, which publishes a weekly press review on the subjects of free software. These working groups are really open to everyone, even if a person who is not a member of April, they go to the April website, they find the working group, they subscribe to the discussion list and they can contribute. The only working group that, in quotes, is “reserved” for April members is the system administration, because it’s managing April’s servers, there is important personal data, so we prefer that people be members of April. We work in working groups and, internally, there is a list dedicated to the institutional part, which is open to members, and this is the other exception: institutional actions are discussed on an internal list for reasons of confidentiality, for questions of trust, but there may be certain subjects that are discussed elsewhere. I think that when you receive Étienne Gonnu who currently holds the position of public affairs, he will probably bring up the theme of free cash register software which is discussed on a public list, the accounting list.
So we have a number of working groups, you don’t need to be a member of April to join them, you just need to have time and almost everything can be done remotely via discussion lists, via the website, via videoconferencing tools.

What can we remember from all these past actions?

Frédéric Couchet: The idea was really, indeed, to make it known to as many people as possible. At the time, we were not even aware that one day we would have to take political action, we were perhaps naïve, it is after three~ years, from memory. April was created in 96, it was from 99 that we realized that we were going to have to mobilize against bills, especially at the European level. We didn’t have that awareness. In fact, one of the strengths of the association is that we have adapted as we have gone along. On the other hand, we had this very clear positioning, this position that free software is a societal issue, people deserve computer freedom and we were going to do what we could to make it known, according to our possibilities and, as we were volunteers, it was according to the time we had, the free time outside of work or during work if we could arrange it.

Walid Nouh: OK. Very clear.
Now, I’d like us to move on to what you remember, in your case, Jeanne, from your time at April, from what you fought for, what you were able to start to set up or put in place. I would like to understand, already you, what you remember from this experience. You arrived with a certain vision of things, you worked on it, you left to do something else. What do you remember from this whole period?

Jeanne Tadeusz: It was quite a long period, I worked for almost six years at April. It was a very positive period, a lot of beautiful things, the battles we fought, some of the great battles, some of which we won, we mentioned ACTA earlier, it was a great fight, a long-term one, in which we still had great successes, even a very good success; a lot of work on Candidats.fr for the elections; a lot of awareness-raising that we have been able to do; We were also able to talk in the administrations. I learned a lot technically, I knew more or less what free software is, but, objectively, it ended there. Even today my computer is under Debian, on my phone I use GrapheneOS and I continue to use free software even if it’s no longer my job, the question is not there and I remain absolutely convinced. I was already involved in everything institutional, but being really on the more militant side I also learned a lot. I continue to have a certain interest in these issues; Today I don’t use it at all, but much more recently, for a little over two years, I was head of department within the CNIL in the department of sovereign affairs, I was in charge of preparing proposals for deliberations for the CNIL on all the subjects that are let’s say sensitive, sovereign – defense, interior, justice, police and so on – and, of course, the questions of free software came back to this and finally, with this work at the CNIL, I also come back to the same issues and maybe today I defend them differently.

Walid Nouh: That’s funny. My next question is: has your experience at April helped you in the following jobs?

Jeanne Tadeusz: She helped me humanly, personally she made me grow, that’s for sure. I learned a lot of things. In all transparency, even if I wouldn’t go into the details of my work because that’s not the subject, today I’m a judge, so it has nothing to do with it. I work in particular on medical accident or public procurement disputes. As much, maybe a little bit of public procurement, I was able to do that at April, but it’s really the limit and I don’t work on these issues at all anymore, but it taught me on a human level, it taught me personally. Investing in an association is also something that is very rich, which I really appreciated. I don’t think I regret having handed over again after six years, because, in the end, I was coming to the end of a cycle. There was a new cycle that was launched with new elections, with new people to raise awareness and a bit of the return of the same subjects. That’s what Fred was saying earlier: after a while, you end up feeling a certain form of weariness in picking up your pilgrim’s staff and starting again what you’ve already done, I think it was time for me to hand over to someone who didn’t have this kind of fatigue, finally of repetition. But I learned a lot, I enjoyed it enormously, we fought some great fights and we even had victories.

Combining professional and personal life

Walid Nouh: A complementary question comes to me: in this type of job, is it difficult to combine a professional life where you can have a slightly deconstructed schedule, etc., with a personal life? How do you manage to combine the two when we see that meetings can last very late, that it’s not necessarily during office hours?

Jeanne Tadeusz: It’s not necessarily during office hours, there is also a certain flexibility and personally, at April, I have always had a general delegate who made sure that there was respect and separation between professional and personal life, with the possibility of simply recuperating. It’s concrete, it may seem very silly when you say it, but when there’s a meeting in the evening or on the weekend, you get your hours back. We take vacations, we take them and they are respected. It’s both a personal discipline, because it’s true that it’s not easy and it’s something that affects the associative world as a whole, not at all just April. We work with volunteers who are mainly available in the evenings and on weekends. In general, if we work on these issues, it’s because we believe in them, so we can quickly get caught up. You have to set rules for yourself and, obviously, also have a hierarchy next door that makes sure that you don’t burn the candle at both ends and take time off, it allows you to combine one and the other.

Walid Nouh: Fred, on your side, if you take a step back, what do you think of all these years, these different battles won, these threats that come back, etc. ? What do you get out of all this? What could you highlight?

Frédéric Couchet: What do I get out of it? Somewhere, it’s the foot. I am lucky that my activism now corresponds to my professional activity, which is quite rare.
On what Jeanne is saying just now about the potential weariness of a person who is a public affairs person at April, I have the chance to do several activities at April: I help with public affairs, I also do awareness, I do admin-sys, so it’s quite varied. If, at some point, I get bored, or at least something that annoys me on a subject, I can move on. This is really important.
What I remember, in fact, are the human encounters. That is to say that I met absolutely crazy people in terms of quality, it would be difficult to name many of them, but I will still allow myself to mention three:

• on public affairs, there is Christophe Espern in particular, there it was really the warrior mode for the time being, it was a different time, but I didn’t think I’d meet anyone, a computer scientist so not at all a lawyer, with the ability to analyze bills, draft amendments and legislative battles to that extent. We spent a lot of time together and it was really impressive. I am very glad to have met him;
• I would also like to mention the man who took over as president of April when I became General Delegate, Benoît Sibaud. Similarly, Benoît Sibaud is someone who is a volunteer, who has a job on the side, and who was able to intervene on all subjects, in benevolence, intelligence, capable of analysis and reflection and all that. Sometimes I wondered when does he sleep? Frankly incredible too!
• and the last one, to make the link with your next guests, is Bookynette, Magali Garnero who is currently president of April. She’s someone who has incredible energy, incredible kindness, who does a lot of things, she was at a free software event again this weekend. She also participates in the evolution of April as president, she is the second president of April, we had a president before, Véronique Bonnet, in 2020 I think, and now Magali. Same thing, she’s not a computer scientist, she’s a bookseller, she has crazy energy.

That’s already what I remember in April, beyond the battles we were able to fight, the things we were able to win or lose, it’s the human encounters that I was able to make and that I probably wouldn’t have made if I had continued a “professional career”, in quotation marks, in free computing as a computer scientist. For me, it’s above all the encounters and I think there will be others, at least I hope, which means that in the morning, when I get up, I’m happy; when Sunday evening arrives I’m happy too because I know I’m going to find the April.
Just to finish, I’ll come back to what Jeanne said earlier to your question about schedules. Before there was a salaried team at April, I knew a lot of associations, and there are still many, where we often apply the same management methods that we could find in companies, toxic management methods and this is something we have always paid attention to, especially on schedules. It’s true that when you’re in public affairs there’s a difficulty: sometimes you have to spend a night in Parliament or listening to debates, so as Jeanne said, there are recuperations, etc., and above all to preserve yourself too. It’s important. When you are an activist or when you work professionally for an association there is sometimes a risk of doing too much, so it is the responsibility of the board of directors or the person who is in charge of the association or both to ensure that people preserve themselves. We are not here to burn the activists or the people on the salaried team. It’s important.

Walid Nouh: Benoît Sibaud intervened in an episode on the history of LinuxFr, which is also very good, and a big big up to Bookynette who managed to managea round table at the JdLL with the guests who didn’t necessarily prepare well and in the end it went well, it was very nice.

Frédéric Couchet: Specifies what the RPGs are.

Walid Nouh: JdLL, Lyon Free Software Days, 2025 edition. It is a cycle of conferences that takes place every year, which are very diverse in the themes to be addressed. I really recommend you to come if you have the opportunity, it’s really nice, there are lots of different conferences, lots of questions that are asked. It’s really a great event, in France there aren’t a lot of them left, there are still the JdLL.
We’ve already talked a lot, we’ve already been together for an hour and a quarter. We’ve talked about Libre à vous!, but I think we’re going to talk about it a lot more in the upcoming episodes. It’s a subject that is also very close to my heart because it’s one of my main sources for preparing my own episodes, so I think we’ll talk about it at some length at another time.

Conclusion

By way of conclusion, before leaving you the last word, I would like to ask you two questions; the first: what would you say to people to support April?

Walid Nouh: Jeanne, do you want to start?

Jeanne Tadeusz: I’ll start. To support April, come, come to April, those who can, come and see physically, those who cannot, subscribe to newsletters, join if you wish, participate in the working groups and don’t be afraid because it is an association that takes care to welcome everyone by taking into account the specificities of each one.

Frédéric Couchet: I’ll hang the rest. I think it is important, in associative structures, to be able to diversify the driving forces in order to be as close as possible to changes in society. There are associations that can’t do that, that will die because they stay in a past time with a past functioning, I won’t name names, obviously. It is important for us to have members or supporters, people who participate in our working groups without necessarily joining, who are as diverse as possible, knowing that there is still a lot of work to be done. I would also say that if there are people who are a little anxious about what’s happening in IT today, and they’re right, with the GAFAMs, the Internet giants and others, that they know that one way to treat anxiety is action, so at April you can find different ways to act, it can be simply transcribing recordings, It can be participating in events, it can be doing translations, we also have a group that takes care of translations. The action also allows us to treat anxiety so don’t hesitate to join us.

Walid Nouh: I had a second question, but I realize that it’s pretty much the same as the first one, I’m going to change it. Jeanne, how does it feel to see that the subjects you were able to bring to April, on which you were committed around sovereignty, respect for freedoms, etc., are even more topical today? In the end, it was quite avant-garde!

Jeanne Tadeusz: That’s a great question. What does it do? There is an additional pride in having led these battles from the start, maybe we would be in a worse state, and it may not be very presumptuous of me to say so. We started to raise the alarm early on these subjects, and we were right, in a way. There is a form of validation in saying that we have tried to alert, we have alerted, we have had success on things that are really important. I left my position at April in 2016, I think that Trump in power and the threat we have vis-à-vis the United States in particular are not things we imagined at the time. Beyond that, we were already raising these questions, perhaps not as acutely as today, but sovereignty and the potential problems that it could pose, today we are talking about tariffs, we are being told about these issues. As a citizen, as a committed person, I find that the issues we have dealt with are still relevant. We launched them, they continue to exist, and we may have been able, and I think it’s ultimately important, to lift the veil on these issues from the start and, in the end, it validates April’s fight all the more to continue to make all these issues known.

Walid Nouh: Fred, do you want to add anything on this question? If you don’t have anything to add, I’m not going to say that I’m very optimistic, but paradoxically I have the impression that all the subjects on which we have all fought around free software are put forward today and maybe it’s a moment when we can really do things. What do you think?

Frédéric Couchet: Of course, without free software, the GAFAM would not be able to do what they do. Should we be happy about this? Mobile telephony for example, Jeanne talked about her phone, I have a FairPhone, but the majority of people don’t have that.
After that, I don’t worry about questions of optimism or pessimism anymore, I come back to what I said earlier, I act at my level and after that everything is not in our hands in fact, unfortunately, or fortunately, I don’t know, people are free. It is because we are living in an international situation, even in France, such as it was impossible to imagine at that point. The important thing is that everyone acts where he or she feels able to act, that’s what we do at April. After that, we don’t impose anything, people are free to do what they want. We try to make these alternatives known and even we, on a personal level, sometimes have contradictions, we have to respect them. In any case, it is important to really act at your level if you want to do it and it is possible today.
Maybe one of the issues is the youth too. The world of free software, the free software communities are aging. I wasn’t at the Free Software Days in Lyon, but I guess that the average age was not necessarily very low, the average age of April is not necessarily very low either, maybe that’s one of the issues. Today, when you’re young, you’re actually going to be more concerned about the climate, you’re going to be more concerned about discrimination, which is perfectly understandable. Perhaps there are things to be done so that these worlds come together, as Framasoft does a little with its tools, that associative structures use ethical and therefore free tools. This is one of the challenges because otherwise associations like April get old, at some point there will be an end. I think that’s what we have to act on, that we have to think about it to continue to evolve and also continue to be relevant because it’s important. An association must not continue to exist for the sake of existing, it continues to exist because it has an interest and today April’s action still has an interest. Maybe one day we will have won, as they say, I don’t know, in any case we are still relevant today so don’t hesitate to join us.

Walid Nouh: We are coming to the end of the interview. I would like to leave you with a final word, if you have a message to convey before we leave. It’s time, Jeanne, do you want to say a word?

Jeanne Tadeusz: A final word: long live free software, we must not be afraid of free software. When I arrived, I didn’t know anything about it, today it’s still something that interests me. Long live the Free! I know that this remains the slogan at April. Long live the Free! In addition, Free Software is good, it works, you will meet good people and you have to take advantage of it.

Walid Nouh: Fred.

Frédéric Couchet: For my part, I would say get involved, don’t hesitate, don’t be afraid to get involved, not necessarily in the Free Software, in general, I find that the militant, associative commitment, has changed my life compared to what was normally planned, but by being careful about the association you set foot in. As I said earlier, not every association is necessarily respectful of the people who are committed. I think that activism, that getting involved is important today and April is a good example because it’s an association that is militant, human and joyful, we have a lot of fun at April, even more so with Magali Garnero, the president. So above all, don’t hesitate to get involved, I think it’s good when you get involved, whatever the level of commitment, it’s good for morale, it’s good for society.

Walid Nouh: Perfect. I’ll stay with your two last words, we’re going to leave there.
Thank you very much Jeanne, thank you very much Fred for agreeing to come and speak, for taking the time to do so. It also allows the listeners of the podcast to know a little more about April and your own commitments, it’s really nice.
Of course, you who are listening, don’t hesitate to share this episode, to give feedback, mainly on Mastodon if you can, it will be with great pleasure or, if we have the chance to meet in an event, don’t hesitate to come and say that you liked this kind of episode and of course also to tell our two guests of the day.
See you soon for other episodes, especially see you soon for the rest of the episodes on April.
Thank you Jeanne. Thank you Fred. See you again.

Frédéric Couchet: Thank you Walid.

Jeanne Tadeusz: Thank you Walid.ticulier see you soon for the rest of the episodes on April.
Thank you Jeanne. Thank you Fred. See you again.

Episode production

• Remote check-in on May 26, 2025
• Basis: Frédéric Couchet, Jeanne Tadeusz and Walid Nouh
• Transcription: Marie-Odile Morandi (April transcription group) on librealire.org ( CC by-ND 4.0 license)

This article has been automatically translated from the original language into English.

License

This podcast is released under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license or later