Saturday 20 September 2008

SFD 2008 competition winners announced

Congratulations to FOSS Nepal, SFD Nicaragua and DabaweGnu for submitting winning entries for the SFD 2008 competition! More information can be found on the competition webpage.

Well done to the team leaders Subir Pradhanang, Leandro Gomez and Holden Hao - we will be dispatching OLPC computers to each of them. And thanks to over five hundred team leaders, and all those who submitted reports and entries about their events.

Tell us about YOUR Software Freedom Day - DEADLINE EXTENDED!

This is your chance to tell us how SFD went where you are.

Team leaders are encouraged to go to the event reporting page and tell us how many people they interacted with and generally how their event went. Unfortunately this is only for team leaders - but don't forget to sign up to the mailing list to hear when next year's registrations open, and you could be an SFD2009 team leader!

Oh, and for those team leaders who submit reports before 27 October 2008 (we've extended the deadline by one week!) there is the chance of winning one of three pairs of OLPC laptops - see the competition page for more details.

500 teams registered for SFD08!

That is over 500 teams in over 90 countries all around the world, all celebrating SFD and taking software freedom to the masses!

Planet Software Freedom Day

Send us your blog feeds to add to the newly created SFD planet. Email info at softwarefreedomday dot org to get your blog and SFD news added today!

Make sure you blog and also add your media releases and other news coverage to the SFD 2008 media page!

New SFD resources for teams

The wonderful JMC (an SFI board member) has put together an excellent array of SFD resources for teams, collating stuff from over the last 3 years! The wonderful Peter Ruwoldt has also been busy putting together a page of SFD resources for education, so check it out! Please add your talks, videos, art and other resources there everyone!

Introduction to free software by Stephen Fry

An excellent resource for teams and anyone interested in understanding free software, and software freedom.

SFD '08 team supplies are on their way

Those of you who may be tuning in to the Olympics have another reason to be interested in achievements in China: our team supplies are as we speak making their way from China to all those team leaders who registered before the deadline and requested supplies.

Frederic Muller, a heroic SFI board member based in Beijing, has been working hard over the last few months to organise suppliers for the materials we are planning to send you and shipping to make sure it gets to you. With the support of his friends at the Beijing LUG, they have been collecting and packaging up the supplies in the last two weeks and shipping them to teams in 65 countries across the globe.

Frederic has shipped the following supplies to teams:

  • at least 3 T-shirts
  • a bunch of stickers
  • a handful of button badges
  • a bunch of balloons
  • a small number of OpenDisc8.5 and OpenEducationDisc CDs

The supplies have been shipped by EMS from China, with a maximum shipping time of 20 days to all countries. So those teams that registered before the deadline should be receiving team supplies before the end of August.

While you're watching the Olympics, feel free to cheer on the Netherlands because that's where your team's Ubuntu 8.04.1 CDs are being shipped from. Canonical (the company behind Ubuntu, and a sponsor of Software Freedom Day) is sponsoring the supply of CDs. Keep an eye out for these, they are being shipped this week and will be delivered by courier.

Teams can still register to participate in SFD, but we will not be sending supplies to any more teams this year. Email info@sf-day.org if you would like more information.

Happy software freedom planning - and congratulations, you're part of a fantastic global effort (check out the map) reaching from Nepal to Chile, Russia to Nigeria, Germany to Australia via USA and back!

Registrations are open for Software Freedom Day 2008!

Register your Software Freedom Day event for September 20th, 2008 in our new registration system, which makes it easy to find teams on an interactive map! The first 300 teams registered receive a SFD team pack including SFD 2008 tshirts, button pins, stickers and balloons, as well some useful resource CDs (some OpenEducation Disc, a resource DVD with artwork, documentation, presentation templates and video material, and the option for some Ubuntu CDs.

Learn how to run a new event from our easy to read StartGuide.

Resources to support schools

Results from SFD 2007 Competition accounced

Many congratulations to the three winning teams of the SFD 2007 Best Event competition, FOSS Nepal, SFD Nicaragua and Beijing Software Freedom Day! All winners details as well as the highly commended entries are available on the winners webpage. Thank you to everyone for your excellent entries. It was a tough decision and fantastic to see so many great examples of taking Software Freedom to the streets!

Over 330 teams celebrated Software Freedom Day in 2007

(!) Could all Software Freedom Day teams please fill in this short report form so we can collect numbers for SFD 2007. Thank you! :)

Bringing software freedom to a street near you

Software Freedom Day is a global, grassroots effort to educate the public about the importance of software freedom and the virtues and availability of Free and Open Source Software. Local teams from all over the world organise events on the third Saturday in September. The most recent event involved over 200 teams from all over the world.

Latest News

Software Freedom International going for United Nations recognition

The Software Freedom International Board are pleased to announce that they will be pursuing formal United Nations recognition of Software Freedom Day as a day of international importance for 2008! We are looking for people interested in assisting with this process, so please contact us at info at softwarefreedomday.org if you want to be involved.

Interview with Mark Shuttleworth for Software Freedom Day

"I have had comments and emails and reports from people all over the world who have been introduced to Free Software through ... Software Freedom Day." Thanks Mark! :) A great interview from Mark Shuttleworth for Software Freedom Day 2007.

Teams preparing for SFD 2007

As the teams prepare for Software Freedom Day 2007, they are sending news and tidbits, like this gorgeous photo, to the teams mailing list.

Updated ISO of TheOpenCD available for SFD

We've got a version of TheOpenCD updated with all the latest installers, it can be downloaded from the sourceforge mirrors system, please grab a copy and help us test it.

Download TheOpenCD SFD2007 Edition

Put SFD 2007 in your diary!

The date to remember for the next SFD is Saturday 15 September 2007. We're currently putting together plans for this event, so please check back here or join the mailing list to hear what's happening.

T-Shirts For 2007

The t-shirt design has been decided on! The 2007 registered teams will be receiving limited numbers of T-shirts, and you can buy more here. Teams can get the team discount by emailing info at softwarefreedomday.org. Normal shirts are $30 each and teams get them for $15 each.

On the back of the 2007 t-shirts is our missions statement-"Software Freedom Day - empowering all people to freely connect, create and share in digital world that is participatory, transparent, and sustainable."

Winners of the SFD 2006 competition

The SFD 2006 event hosted by LinuxChix at Mutare University, Zimbabwe, won the Best Event category

The results of the SFD competition have been announced - congratulations to the winners, and thanks to those who submitted entries!

More News

For More News. And check out the archives for previous events!

More Resources

SFD Mailing Lists

We now have three mailing lists:

  • SFD-announce - low-traffic announcement list (sponsorships, competitions,etc)

  • SFD-discuss - join up to hear discussion from around the world about SFD events

  • planning-es - the spanish mailing list for team planning

Please join the SFD-announce list to keep up to date on what's being organised for the next SFD event.

Open Letters For Use in Your Community

We've got a starting point for an open letter that anyone can personalize and send to a local educational institution. An open letter to the government has also been created, but it needs your input!

Press and Marketing Materials

Find some useful press releases done by other teams and contribute your own press coverage on the Press page and find other useful marketing resources on the marketing page.

Artwork

You can use the SFD 2007 logo for your promotional material, or else take a look at all the logos, T-shirt designs and posters which have been contributed at Artwork. We have recently added a couple of images with Spanish at the bottom of this page.

Previous Software Freedom Days

If you want to see what happened in previous years, check out the team archives and see the news items from SFD 2005. If you want to find out what previous years' teams found worthwhile and what not, take a look at lessons learned.


  • You are welcome to participate! Our StartGuide has some pointers on how to join the SFD celebration.