Category: SFD

2018 SFD registration is on!

Posted on by Pockey Lam

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The Digital Freedom Foundation is very happy to announce that registration of its fifteen edition of Software Freedom Day has just opened. This year Software Freedom Day is happening on Saturday September 15th everywhere around the world (or almost). While the SFD wiki was ready to create and update your event page we did a soft launch for the registration at the beginning of the month and have had so far 2 registration emails which didn’t reach the team leaders. If this happens to you check your SPAM folder and eventually email us on SFD-Discuss mailing list. Apart from that everything seems to be running smoothly.

On the sponsors side as we have received questions in the sfd-discuss mailing list so we would like to thank Linode, Canonical, for providing hosting, mailing list and some technical support for longer than we can remember. On the funding part however we haven’t received any money from anyone for the 4th consecutive year due to relocation of our organization and various other issues. We do however want to thank Google for their continuous support and hope we will resume receiving funding very soon.

So as usual registering an SFD event is as simple as 1-2-3:

At the end of all this you’ll appear on the SFD 2018 Map with all the other teams here and be easy to spot.

If you need further information we have an exhaustive guide here at the wiki StartGuide page for newcomers and for the others who need help, and the SFD-Discuss mailing list is probably the best place to get prompt support.

We have also the SFD countdown ready and in 7 languages. You can find further information here.

So all the best and get ready for Software Freedom Day 2018.

Thank you very much and happy SFD!

The Digital Freedom Foundation

Celebrate SFD with us on September 17, 2016!

…and today is Software Freedom Day!

Posted on by Pockey Lam

For its fourteenth edition the Digital Freedom Foundation is happy to celebrate Software Freedom Day! At the time of this writting we have 112 teams listed on the wiki and about 80+ events registered. Over the year we’ve notice that this “double registration process” (creating a wiki page and then filling the registration form) is a bit difficult for some of our participants and we wish to change that. In the plan for the coming months we plan to have a single registration process which will in turn generate a wiki page. We also want to display the event date as some of us cannot celebrate exactly on this international day due to local celebrations or other reasons.

Never the less please do look on the map and in the country listing and find an event in your area. If there is none, maybe it’s a good opportunity to start an event with your community! And then join us and celebrate!

Happy SFD to all!

Celebrate your SFD event this Saturday! Register now!

Posted on by Pockey Lam

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The The Digital Freedom Foundation is very happy to announce that its fourteenth edition of Software Freedom Day will be celebrated this coming Saturday on September 16, 2017. If you haven’t registered your team yet it’s time to do it now!

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 this page
3. Go to the registration page to register 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 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.

Back to SFD registration we have an exhaustive StartGuide here for newcomers and for the others who need help, and the SFD-Discuss mailing list is probably the best place to get prompt support.

So get ready to celebrate and happy preparations to all!

Celebrate SFD with us on September 17, 2016!

Happy Software Freedom Day!

Posted on by Pockey Lam

Celebrate SFD with us on September 17, 2016!And today is the 13th edition of Software Freedom Day! We wish you all a great day talking to people and discovering (or making them discovery) the benefits and joys of running Free Software. As usual we have a map where you can find all the events in your area. Should you just discover about SFD today and want to organize an event it is never too late. While the date is global, each team has the freedom to run the event at a date that is convenient in their area. We (in Cambodia) are running our event on November 26 due to university schedule, other conferences and religious holidays conflicting.

So hopefully you’ll get hooked just like us and start a new journey into the world of learning, sharing and contributing to your needs!

Happy Software Freedom Day to all of us!

September is here!

Posted on by Pockey Lam

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!

Celebrate SFD with us on September 17, 2016!