Top Social

Fundația Ceata becomes supporting organization of Software Freedom Day

Bucharest, Romania and Hong Kong, China -- For its continuous and growing effort to spread awareness on Free Software among Romanian speakers with the occasion of the international days run by the Digital Freedom Foundation, Fundația Ceata gets acknowledged as supporting organization of Software Freedom Day near the date of this year's edition.

The Digital Freedom Foundation (DFF) is the international organization behind the Software Freedom Day (SFD), Culture Freedom Day (CFD), Hardware Freedom Day (HFD) and soon Education Freedom Day (EFD). Since 2004, DFF has been running the Software Freedom Day, at first under the name of Software Freedom International. The name was changed to reflect the wider range of events dedicated to Digital Freedom. For SFD, DFF provides the infrastructure and the technical support for the teams worldwide to register their events, handles sponsorship contracts, sends promotional materials to the registered teams and organizes the annual Best SFD Event competition.

"We have been following the activity of Digital Freedom Foundation for quite some time now and three years ago we have decided to step in and help them make a difference", says Tiberiu C. Turbureanu, President of Fundația Ceata. "Their flagship event, Software Freedom Day (SFD), is our main focus too and we hope to succeed in organizing or help organizing SFD in every county seat in Romania and Republic of Moldova 5 years from now."

While it was still an informal group, Ceata was the first to organize SFD in Romania beginning with 2011 in the capital city of Bucharest, and also partnered with Moodle Romania and ASI UVVG to help them organize SFD events in 2011 and 2012 in Arad. In 2012, Ceata has organized SFD events in two other cities besides the capital, where it had local teams (in Chișinău, Moldova with Ceata-MD and in Turda with Ceata-CJ). In 2013, the newly incorporated foundation called Fundația Ceata is organizing events celebrating SFD and 30 years of GNU in six cities in Romania and Moldova: Bălți, Bucharest, Chișinău, Cluj-Napoca, Constanța and Râmnicu Vâlcea, with the help of of its volunteers and all three local teams: Ceata-MD, Ceata-CJ and Ceata-VL.

"Congratulations are definitely in order for Ceata to have become a Foundation and we are very pleased to find another organization with which we share the same principles", says Frederic Muller, President of the Digital Freedom Foundation. "We feel that what the Digital Freedom Foundation is working on at the moment will be of interest to Fundația Ceata and we are delighted to already have a partner in this new adventure. We can only tell everyone to stay tuned and expect great things from both organizations."

This year, Fundația Ceata has organized a variety of Digital Freedom Days in Romania and Moldova, starting with FSFE's Document Freedom Day (DFD), and continuing with DFF's CFD and HFD. To better document those events for more people to learn about Digital Freedom, Fundația Ceata has published a new website called "Libertatea Digitală" ("Digital Freedom" in Romanian), which will also be updated with this edition and older editions of SFD organized by Fundația Ceata in Romania and Moldova.

"It is with great pleasure that we are officially extending our collaboration with Fundația Ceata, an organization with whom we have had several discussions since 2011 and which we have seen growing both in terms of events in their region and in terms of actions they are doing all year around", says Frederic Muller. "Thanks to such efforts the general public becomes more aware of the importance of Software, Culture and Hardware Freedoms and is able to make the right choices to protect its rights and freedom!"

Continuing its effort to advance the Free Software Movement and to promote Digital Freedom at large, this summer Fundația Ceata has organized the first edition of the national conference called Coliberator (a play on the words "collaborator" and "liberator") which among key Romanian activists, developers and visionaries, also had important international speakers like Karsten Gerloff (FSFE) and Amelia Andersdotter (EP).

"The Council and all the members of Fundația Ceata are excited that their efforts put in promoting Software Freedom has led Fundația Ceata to being officially recognized as supporting organization of Software Freedom Day by its organizers and at the same time, one of the most active and effective Digital Freedom international organization, the Digital Freedom Foundation", says Tiberiu C. Turbureanu. "As a result of this recognition, we plan to extend our collaboration on other projects as well and work more closely in the future."