26 March 2008: Today is Document Freedom Day!
Today is Document Freedom Day: Roughly 200 teams from more than 60 countries worldwide are organising local activities to raise awareness for Document Freedom and Open Standards. To support the initiatives surrounding the first day to celebrate document liberation, DFD starter packs containing a DFD flag, t-shirts and leaflets have been sent to the first 100 registered teams over the past weeks.
In a world where records are increasingly kept in electronic form, Open Standards are crucial for valuable information to outlive the application in which it was initially generated. The question of Document Freedom has severe repercussions for freedom of choice, competition, markets and the sovereignty of countries and their governments.
"We are very happy about the response and activities that teams around the world have scheduled," says Ivan Jelic, DFD Coordinator. "Activities we have heard about range from local speeches and information events through to prizes being given to governmental bodies that adopted good policies in the field of Document Freedom and Open Standards. It will be a challenge to document everything that is taking place today."
"Who controls your valuable information? This question has become central for the distribution of power and wealth in the networked society," explains Georg Greve, president of FSFE. "Document Freedom is about giving you control of your information, it is about giving governments control of their public records, and it is about freedom of choice. You can give yourself that freedom today by switching to one of the many Free Software applications that support the Open Document Format and that run on many different platforms!"
A list of Free Software applications that support ODF is available at
http://documentfreedom.org/Applications
Greve concludes: "Along with many others around the world, FSFE's teams in several countries will be spending the day distributing information about Open Standards and Document Freedom. My greetings and gratitude go to everyone participating in this global effort, particulary FSFE's young Serbian team who did the main work on DFD regardless of a very difficult local situation!"
How you can get active
The Document Freedom Day is a collaborative effort.
You can make a difference by linking to http://documentfreedom.org, generate your own artworks or use the ones available at
http://documentfreedom.org/Artwork or generate your own.
You could also print out some of the DFD leaflets at
http://www.documentfreedom.org/2008/DFD_Starter_Pack#Leaflet
and give them to your co-workers, family or friends. And if you feel creative, consider taking pictures or small video testimonials that show the world what Document Freedom means to you!
About the Document Freedom Day
The Document Freedom Day (DFD) is a global day for Document Liberation with roughly 200 active teams worldwide. It is a day of grassroots effort around the world to promote and build awareness for the relevance of Free Document Formats in particular and Open Standards in general.
Document Freedom Day is supported by a large group of organisations and individuals, including, but not limited to Ars Aperta, COSS, Esoma, Free Software Foundations Europe and Latin America, IBM, NLnet, ODF Alliance, OpenForum Europe, OSL, iMatix, Red Hat, Sun Microsystems, Inc., The Open Learning Centre, Opentia, Estandares Abiertos.
The list of DFD supporting groups can be found
http://documentfreedom.org/Who
The list of DFD Teams is available at
http://documentfreedom.org/Category:Teams
About the Free Software Foundation Europe
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is a non-profit non-governmental organisation active in many European countries and involved in many global activities. Access to software determines participation in a digital society. To secure equal participation in the information age, as well as freedom of competition, the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) pursues and is dedicated to the furthering of Free Software, defined by the freedoms to use, study, modify and copy. Founded in 2001, creating awareness for these issues, securing Free Software politically and legally, and giving people Freedom by supporting development of Free Software are central issues of the FSFE.