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Document Freedom Day 2018

by Frederic Muller - DFF

Dear all, It is with great pleasure that we're announcing registration opening for DFD 2018. As you may know the process is slightly different now as you need to create a wiki page for your event first at http://wiki.documentfreedom.org/2018 and then register your event in order to appear on the map at http://www.documentfreedom.org/cgi-bin/register.py This avoids all the issues we had in the past with some addresses we could not find on OpenStreetMap as you now manually select the place. As usual Document Freedom Day is on the last Wednesday of March which will be Wednesday 28 this year. As usual you can find more information about the things you can do on our website at http://www.documentfreedom.org/getinvolved . A big thank you goes to our usual sponsors and more specifically Google, Linode and Ubuntu who have been supporting us for years. Then we have our partners in crime such as the FSFE and the FSF and the happy media sponsors. More about them here: http://www.digitalfreedomfoundation.org/index.php/sponsors Should anyone have any issue or question please let us know on the mailing list. Thank you very much and have a colorful Document Freedom Day 2018! Kind regards, Frederic Muller ---------------- Digital Freedom Foundation

March 5, 2018

SFD 2017 registration is on!

by Frederic Muller - DFF

Dear all, The Digital Freedom Foundation is very happy to announce that registration of its fourteenth edition of Software Freedom Day has just opened. While the wiki was ready and open since April this year we just started the official registration with the map display on Monday as we were having small issues with our SSL certificates. So as usual registering an SFD event is as simple as 1-2-3: 1. Create a wiki account if you don't already have one 2. Create a wiki page in your area under http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/2017/ then country/city/team 3. Go to https://www.softwarefreedomday.org/cgi-bin/register.py and let us know exactly who and where you are. At the end of all this you'll appear on the SFD 2017 Map here with all the other teams https://www.softwarefreedomday.org/map/ and be easy to spot. We want to thank our usual sponsors Google, Linode, Canonical, the FSF and FSFE. We would also like to thank Freiheit technologies, a software company based in Hamburg, Germany for continuing to support us. Full details of our sponsors are available at this page: http://digitalfreedomfoundation.org/index.php/sponsors . Back to SFD registration we have an exhaustive guide here at http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/StartGuide for newcomers and for the others who need help, and the SFD-Discuss mailing list is probably the best place to get prompt support ( http://mail.sf-day.org/lists/listinfo/sfd-discuss ). So get ready to celebrate and happy preparations to all! The Digital Freedom Foundation

Aug. 30, 2017

Hardware Freedom Day on Saturday April 15th!

by Frederic Muller - DFF

Dear all, And yet again we are announcing Hardware Freedom Day 2017 which is now scheduled on the 3rd Saturday of April. We opened registration end of last week and you can all register as you've been doing in the past. As a reminder we have also set a 2nd Document Freedom Day for April 26th for those of you who missed it due to our late announcement. So For Hardware Freedom Day - Saturday April 15 - you can create your event page here: http://wiki.hfday.org/2017 and register here: http://hfday.org/cgi-bin/register.py For Document Freedom Day - Wednesday April 26 - the wiki section is here: http://wiki.documentfreedom.org/2017 and the registration is here: http://www.documentfreedom.org/cgi-bin/register.py Thanks again to all of you for celebrating and spreading the word and all the best for this month of April! Happy Hardware Freedom Day. Fred ---- on behalf of Digital Freedom Foundation

April 5, 2017

Document Freedom Day today/tomorrow on March 29th!

by Frederic Muller - DFF

Dear all! It is with great pleasure that we are announcing Document Freedom Day celebration. As usual the event is celebrated on the last Wednesday of March and a few teams have already celebrated earlier such as people in Taiwan! Due to the late announcement we are thinking to give people 1 more month to prepare for the event and run it on Wednesday April 26th! Make sure you mention the date you're running the event on your wiki page. We've migrated most of the content from the FSFE website to ours but plan on filling up the wikis as we have done with other events to provide tips & tricks for the years to come. We would also like to thank our sponsors Google and Freiheit who have always back us up and deserve a big thank you for that! So without further ado celebrate Document Freedom Day fully and enjoy every moment of it! Thank you! on behalf of DFF ---------------- Frederic Muller

March 28, 2017

September is here!

by Frederic Muller - DFF

September is the Software Freedom Day(1) month (among other things) since 2005 (SFD 2004 was in August) and this year is no exception! As of last night we have a total of 58 events(2) in 34 countries(3), with only 42 fully registered(4) (you can see the location on our famous SFD map). There is always a delay between wiki page creation (which includes the plan, speakers, date and location) and the registration which ask organizers to specify where the event will happen. What to expect from most events? Well Software Freedom Day is really an event to introduce Free and Open Source Software to newcomers and show them all the cool things which can be done using FOSS. While we have a resource(5) page on our wiki to discuss about the various topics which can be presented we let each team decide how to organize their events. Usually events go through FOSS migration or how to gradually switch from proprietary software to FOSS ones starting by switching common applications such as email clients, office applications or other daily used tools. Once all this is working fine an Operating System migration is thinkable. Of course you will always have that application that has no GNU/Linux/BSD equivalent and it is always a pain. Among the various solutions you can either use a virtual machine inside your Free Operating System (but it will usually require extra RAM), dual boot or try Wine/Crossover(6). There is always the possibility to keep an extra machine just for that too. Then you have all the more exciting topics about specific tasks or applications which are fully FOSS compliants. Among many Blender(7) and its various projects(8) are probably the more eye catching ones. You also have Inkscape(9) and GIMP(10) for the digital graphists. Then you have projects such as Open Street Map(11) which everyone can make use of and contribute to, or web oriented application such as web servers, web analytics, content management software, configuration application for server such as Vagrant(12) or Ansible(13), programming language and fun stuff like PyWeek(14) or also educational applications and distributions to get your kids started. And the list goes on... and then there are the social parts of the events where you meet people and do things together. We've had many variations of that over the years and we believe the 2016 edition will be no exception. What can you expect? Best is to attend and see for yourself. And for the one still wondering if they have time to prepare for September 17, the simple answer is SURE!. You can start reading our StartGuide(15) to get familiar with what to do, and then talk to other FOSS members of your community. So don't forget to put our countdown(16) on your sites or blogs and see you all on September 17! Fred on behalf of Digital Freedom Foundation 1. http://www.softwarefreedomday.org/ 2. http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/CategoryTeam2016 3. http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/2016 4. http://www.softwarefreedomday.org/map/index.php?year=2016 5. http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/Resources 6. https://www.codeweavers.com/about/support-wine 7. https://www.blender.org/ 8. https://www.blender.org/features/projects/ 9. https://inkscape.org/ 10. http://www.gimp.org/ 11. http://www.openstreetmap.org/ 12. https://www.vagrantup.com/ 13. https://github.com/ansible 14. https://pyweek.org/ 15. http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/StartGuide 16. http://www.softwarefreedomday.org/index.php/promote/countdown

Sept. 2, 2016

SFD 2016 registration is finally on!

by Frederic Muller - DFF

Dear all, With a bit of delay, the Digital Freedom Foundation is very happy to announce that registration of its thirteenth edition of Software Freedom Day has just opened. While the wiki has been back online for about a week we were still lagging on the registration. Fear no more, it is now fixed and you can all register your events! On the bright side we have a newly configured server and brand new websites for SFD and DFF. Other sites and efforts are on the way. On the sponsorship side we are keeping the same organizations for SFD, Google being our major sponsor, Linode and Canonical helping us on the infrastructure sides. Full details are available on this page: http://digitalfreedomfoundation.org/index.php/sponsors . We would like to point out a new additional sponsor for DFD in the name of Freiheit this year (from our perspective). So as usual registration happens after you have created your event page on the wiki. We have an exhaustive guide here at http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/StartGuide for newcomers and for the others who need help, the SFD-Discuss mailing list is probably the best place to get prompt support. So get ready to celebrate and happy preparations to all! The Digital Freedom Foundation

Aug. 22, 2016

News for 2016, DFD, HFD and more

by Frederic Muller - DFF

Dear all, As a few (many?) of you have seen, our servers got hacked during Christmas and we've been not very fast at getting everything back online. In the meantime we have been handed over the management of Document Freedom Day (DFD) and the FSFE is still hosting the system. It has taken us a bit of time to get familiar with the way events registration is being handled (and events appear...). I believe we're finally ready! So DFD is happening on March 30th this year, being the last Wednesday of March but as usual the date you chose is really what works best for you. Currently we have events planned from March 16 to April 8, with 17 events registered and visible at http://documentfreedom.org/events/events.en.html The website has been updated to a minimum to reflect 2016 changes. Artworks design is available on FSFE git server at https://gitorious.org/document_freedom_day/artwork?p=document_freedom_day:a… Next event planned for 2016 is Hardware Freedom Day which after a community consultation will happen on April 9th (2nd Saturday of the month). It seemed to be the best date for most of interested participant, so that's what we'll use this year. We still need to put the website, the wiki and the registration scripts back online, something which should happen this week or the next. The leftover is Education Freedom Day which obviously can't happen on March 23rd this year for a few reasons. We would be interested to know what date works best for you, and will run a poll as we did for HFD. And last but not least, Software Freedom Day will happen on September 17th this year. We will come back to this later but are planning to run a T-shirt design competition, and hopefully will be able to ship T-shirt this year. Thank you very much for your patience and let wish ourselves the best in promoting Software, Hardware, Document and Education Freedom! Frederic Muller Digital Freedom Foundation

March 14, 2016

Celebrate Software Freedom Day today!

by Frederic Muller - DFF

*Free and Open Source Software* has come a long way since its inception and while we're celebrating *SFD for the twelth time*, the FSF <http://www.fsf.org> is celebrating its 30th anniversary. Every software company now tends to use Free and Open Source Software but unfortunately that has just set the Software more as a commodity with very little benefit for advocacy, education or awareness. And so, in a world with Free Software used almost everywhere very few people notice or even care. Software Freedom Day <http://www.softwarefreedomday.org> is here to tell people why we need to remind ourselves of the importance of Software Freedom and to *get all the communities together to celebrate* and introduce their philosophy to newcomers. Probably more than ever we need to go out and demonstrate the great many things that *Free Software has done and enables everyone to do*. As usual events are listed on the SFD Map <http://www.softwarefreedomday.org/map/index.php?year=2015> and should there be no event in your area you can always get together and run one in the upcoming few weeks. On top of all the good things Free Software brings we would also like to remind people that a good way to get started can be through Outreachy, a remote internships in Free and Open Source Software <http://www.outreachy.org> open to everyone regardless of their origins or differences. The *next round of internships is from December 7 to March 7* with applications *deadline on November 2*. This is of course ideal for students in the south hemisphere as the program requires you to be available 40 hours a week but also for anyone either looking for a career change or applies what he/she has learned in a real software environment. With all these years of experience we are sure your events will shine. And if you're a little short of ideas you can always refer to our resources. <http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/Resources> One of note could be the latest Blender movie released end of August <https://gooseberry.blender.org/> maybe followed by a discussion of how the Blender Foundation has been so successful over the years. Finally we would like to *thank all the people making SFD possible* and that is *our sponsors* like the Google Open Source Programs Office <https://developers.google.com/open-source/>, Linode <http://www.linode.com>, the Free Software Foundation <http://www.fsf.org> and our various *supporters in the media and community arena*. But of course *more importantly all the various Free Software communities* from Google Developer Groups to Free Software Groups, GNU/Linux User Groups and the various universities interested in Free Software among them. So, *Happy Software Freedom Day to all of you! * *Digital Freedom Foundation. *

Sept. 19, 2015

SFD 2015 registration is on!

by Frederic Muller - DFF

Dear all, With a bit of delay, the *Digital Freedom Foundation* is very happy to announce that registration of the twelfth edition of Software Freedom Day <http://www.softwarefreedomday.org/> just opened. While the wiki has been ready for some times and a few teams started to create pages registration was another story. In fact our infrastructure needs updates and we still haven't found way to do that easily. Now as far as Free Software is concerned while we see more projects adopting Free Software licenses we also feel end-users still struggle with their proprietary operating systems. At the same time both hardware and software seems a lot more integrated and in some fields it seems that you can just print something with your Free 3D printers, order some kind of Free Hardware controllers online, flash them, hack them and get a complete and finish product running (or flying, or...). We're involved here with people who had no special interest in Free Software or Hardware and discovered it through pursuing their hobbies, and they just love it! On the sponsorship side we have unfortunately lost Canonical financially but they are still providing the mailing list infrastructure (snif snif.. they were our first sponsors). Google and Linode are still supporting us luckily and we are exploring new ventures (though nothing confirmed at this stage). So as usual registration <http://www.softwarefreedomday.org/cgi-bin/register.py> happens after you have created your event page on the wiki <http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/>. We have an exaustive guide here <http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/StartGuide> for newcomers and for the others who need help, the SFD-Discuss mailing <http://mail.sf-day.org/lists/listinfo/sfd-discuss> is probably the best place to get prompt support. As usual we will come back with more details things to do or worth mentioning to bring inspiration and motivation to the celebration on the sfd-discuss mailing list. So get ready to celebrate and happy preparations to all! The Digital Freedom Foundation

Aug. 1, 2015

Education Freedom Day on March 21st 2015!

by Frederic Muller - DFF

Dear all, For its second edition Education Freedom Day is coming back full speed on a better date for the people from the south of the planet and the people in China (at least). We have indeed listen to the scheduling problems and have moved the event to the third Saturday of March. As usual for all our Freedom celebrations the process is similar, you get together and decide to organize an event, then create a page in our wiki[1] and register your team[2]. As the date approaches you get to put more information in your wiki page (or on your organization website which is linked from the wiki) such as the date and time, the location and what people can expect to see. Education Freedom Day is really the opportunity to review all the available Free Educational Resources available, how they have improved since last year and what you should start planning to implement to deploy in the coming months. We try to list the major materials we hear about (a few of them at least) in our wiki [3] which goes from specific tuition to complete solutions making sure those are really Free as in Freedom. Some involve software, some don't (except for the materials to follow). You can of course help us to complete the list by editing the wiki. Artworks and promotional banners[4], countdown[5] are available for use and reuse. All can be found on the wiki (we've added the links below. We wish you the best possible time to prepare and spend EFD and will blog on DFF website[6] as we get closer to the event, about the various things we feel could be interesting. Should you be up to sharing your experience don't hesitate to email the EFD mailing list, and why not be invited to blog on our website! Thanks a lot and happy EFD! Fred Digital Freedom Foundation ----------------------------------- [1] - http://wiki.educationfreedomday.org [2] - http://www.educationfreedomday.org/cgi-bin/register.py [3] - http://wiki.educationfreedomday.org/Resources [4] - http://wiki.educationfreedomday.org/Promote [5] - http://wiki.educationfreedomday.org/CountDown [6] - http://www.digitalfreedomfoundation.org/

Jan. 20, 2015