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03 June 2009, 15:36

Ad Bard - Ethical advertising and the free software community

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Yesterday, 2nd of June, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) announced the launch of Ad Bard, a new advertising network for technology based websites based upon the promotion of Free, Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) friendly products and services. The Foundation release says this is an ethical alternative to advertising networks that promote proprietary software alongside FLOSS. The Foundation's objection to such sites is that through advertising proprietary software alongside FLOSS the proprietary software is in some way "legitimised".

Peter Brown, Executive Director of the Free Software Foundation said "The Free Software Community now has an ethical alternative to ad networks that promote proprietary software. This is a huge win for many of the sites that serve our community. And we wish AdBard and the websites that display AdBard adverts every success. We also hope this will inspire other ad networks to adopt similar policies."

Websites already using AdBard include KernelTrap, Libre.FM and Boycott Novell. A complete list is available at Ad Bard publishers. Prospective advertisers should visit the AdBard advertisers page.

The Ad Bard network has been created by Tag1 Consulting, Inc., a consulting company that focuses on performance and scalability tuning of the entire LAMP stack, which is Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP and specialising in Drupal performance.

In its announcement the Free Software Foundation takes pains to point out that it has no financial interest in Tag1 Consulting and that it receives no income from Ad Bard.

(trk)

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