July 2025 - SFD-discuss - lists.mailman3.com

Design the Software Freedom Day 2025 Mascot with Free Software – Huion Challenge now open!
by LM Oct. 26, 2025

Oct. 26, 2025

Greetings. Do you love creating with Free,Libre, Open Source Software (FLOSS)? Here’s your chance to show the world what digital freedom looks like: help us design the official Software Freedom Day (SFD) 2025 mascot--built entirely with FLOSS tools and released under CC BY-SA 4.0 or CC BY 4.0. Whether you model in Blender or paint in Krita, 2-D or 3-D is welcome. --- What’s in it for you? --- Huion is back with fantastic prizes for the top entries: 1 - Kamvas Pro 16 (4K) pen-display 2 - Kamvas Pro 12 pen-display 3 - 2 × Inspiroy Frego M tablets --- How to take part --- 1. Create your mascot in any FLOSS graphics tool (Krita, GIMP, Inkscape, Blender, MyPaint, ...). 2. Add a short back-story (≤ 1000 characters). 3. Submit both the source file (.kra/.xcf/.svg/.blend…) and a web-ready image (.png/.jpg, 1920 × 1080). 4. Make sure your work is licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 or CC BY 4.0. 5. Deadline: 20 October 2025. One entry per person, worldwide. --- Need inspiration? --- Last year Janka (Hungary) soared to first prize with a Krita painting, while Deffy (USA) wowed us with a Blender animation and Yue Xin (Malaysia) lit up the canvas in Krita. Their success shows how powerful - and fun - FLOSS creativity can be! --- Why join? --- * Celebrate software freedom and show what’s possible without proprietary constraints. * Get international exposure and feedback from the FLOSS community. * Win Huion hardware to push your art even further. --- Your mission right now --- Forward this challenge to all your creative friends! More entries mean a richer, more colourful mascot showcase for everyone. Thanks for spreading the word and for championing free software creativity. Happy drawing--and good luck! Free-spirited regards, Jurgen, Jan, Chris, Mostafa, Marcos, Ruwan, Laura Digital Freedom Foundation Board

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Some Free Software Favorites in the GUI category
by LM July 27, 2025

July 27, 2025

In preparation for #SFD2025, I thought it might be fun to discuss lightweight GUIs. Maybe some of them will inspire you to create your own #FreeSoftware for #SoftwareFreedomDay2025. Please share your favorite Free Software with this list in preparation for Software Freedom 2025 in September. One of my favorites, #raylib. It's designed so students can start programming quickly without having to spend a lot of time learning how to get text and graphics on screen: https://github.com/raysan5/raygui Check out some of the games created for it: https://www.raylib.com/games.html #SDL is a popular graphics library: https://www.libsdl.org/ With addons like sdl3_ttf, sdl3_mixer, sdl3_image, sdl3_gfx, you can easily get text and graphics on screen or listen to music. Have SDL2 programs you want to keep enjoying? Check out the compatibility layer: https://github.com/libsdl-org/sdl2-compat #FLTK has a lot of the features of standard #GUI libraries but still manages to be lightweight with few dependencies. It's been used with #nano-x to create #XFDOS and #nanolinux. #TinyCore also features FLTK applications. FLTK applications even work on handheld and mobile devices. Here's a list of FLTK programs: https://www.fltk.org/links.php?LC+P22+Q While some are designed for older versions of FLTK, I've had no trouble updating many of them to later versions of the library. #nuklear doesn't have as many applications as many other GUIs, but it ports to an impressive number of systems. Here's a list of some programs written with it including a CAD program: https://github.com/vurtun/nuklear/issues/202 nuklear ( https://github.com/Immediate-Mode-UI/Nuklear ) is lightweight but still offers a lot of functionality. If you're looking for a GUI library that works with your #OpenGL programs, I really like #OTK: https://sourceforge.net/projects/otk/ There are some interesting sample programs for this library. #pdcurses ( https://pdcurses.org/ ) brings the ease of use of the classic curses library to a wide variety of platforms. It can even use a SDL backend so that you can run pdcurses applications with X Windows, Wayland, Android or anywhere else SDL works. Use BSD #form and #menu libraries with it to add more GUI functionality.

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Re: Brainstorm swag ideas
by LM July 25, 2025

July 25, 2025

On Wed, Jul 23, 2025 Marcos Marado wrote: > It isn't much of a craft, barwly an hack, but in the past we've used SFD > stickers to turn "blank notebooks" into "SFD notebooks" to give to people > to take notes on the event's presentations. I think that's a very inventive and useful idea. I really like it.

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Brainstorm swag ideas
by LM July 23, 2025

July 23, 2025

Are you good at arts & crafts? Help us brainstorm ideas for homemade swag for #SoftwareFreedomDay2025. Have a printer & mailing labels? You can create #SFD2025 stickers: https://digitalfreedoms.org/en/sfd/blog/software-freedom-day-artwork-and-ex… What about bookmarks, origami disk/USB holders or calligraphy projects? You could even make your own minizine with #FreeSoftware. What would you make?

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We need guest bloggers
by LM July 15, 2025

July 15, 2025

Have you ever wanted to be a guest blogger? We'd love to share blog posts on our Software Freedom Day blog. Any Software Freedom Day topic is fair game from organizing tips for Software Freedom Day events to ideas for activities during Software Freedom Day. You can even share an article on your favorite Free Software picks. We'll promote guest blogger articles on the DFF social media accounts. Ready to see your name published as a guest blogger? Send submissions to the SFD-discuss mailing list or to me. Plus, if you have banner ideas for your article, feel free to include a banner of your choice with a 3 x 1 aspect ratio image.

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Beyond 40
by LM July 11, 2025

July 11, 2025

For areas that may not have active Software Freedom Day planning groups, I thought this might be helpful: https://beyond40.codeberg.page/ They're trying to reignite local interest in Free Software in various areas. We're hoping to get more local FOSS groups organized and interested in creating local Software Freedom Day events.

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