[FSFE PR][EN] Today is DFD '09, global day for document liberation

[Ivan Jelic]

A great global community is gathering today to celebrate the second
Document Freedom Day. After a successful 2008 celebration, Document
Freedom Day teams all over the world are joining efforts to raise
awareness for Document Freedom and Open Standards.

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 happy to see our community getting bigger this year", says Ivan
Jelic, DFD Coordinator. "We expect large variety of activities organized
by DFD teams, from speeches and informative events, to university
document liberation or open standard promotion in local governments."

"Like all Open Standards, Document Freedom provides users with the
freedom to choose their application freely, and yet still be able to
communicate and collaborate with others.", explains Georg Greve,
president of FSFE. "This freedom of choice provides the basis for
competition in the field of text processing software. Where there is
healthy competition, companies and software developers are driven to
innovate, and monopoly pricing becomes impossible. So Document Freedom
means better software and lower cost. Document Freedom also means that
yesterday's documents can easily be read with tomorrow's software,
protecting and preserving your data against forced vendor
incompatibilities through the upgrade treadmill."

The DFD team will do its best to gather all the information about this
year activities, organize them and publish on DFD web pages. If you have
material about local document liberation activities, please send mail
to: contact AT documentfreedom.org

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.

You could also print out some of the DFD leaflets at
http://www.documentfreedom.org/Artwork#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 250 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 organizations and
individuals, including, but not limited to ANSOL, Ars Aperta,
BrOffice.org, COSS, Esoma, Estándares Abiertos, FFII, Free Knowledge
Foundation, Free Software Foundation, Free Software Foundation Europe,
Free Software Foundation Latin America, Funambol, Google, IBM, NLnet,
ODF Alliance, Open Forum Europe, Open Source Initiative (OSI), Opentia,
OSL, iMatix, Red Hat, Sun, The Open Learning Centre.

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 organization 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.

http://fsfeurope.org
You can find this text online at
http://www.fsfeurope.org/news/2009/news-20090325-01