September is the Software Freedom Day 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 in 34 countries, with only 42 fully registered (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 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. 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 and its various projects are probably the more eye catching ones. You also have Inkscape and GIMP for the digital graphists. Then you have projects such as Open Street Map 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 or Ansible, programming language and fun stuff like PyWeek 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 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 on your sites or blogs and see you all on September 17!