DFF, registered as a charity in the USA under the Software Freedom International name in 2007, is the non-profit organization at the origin of Software Freedom Day, Culture Freedom Day and Hardware Freedom Day. The name change came progressively starting in 2011 in order to reflect the changes in our directions and also because we had to change registration territory.
DFF handles sponsorship contracts, official team registrations, sending out schwags to teams, the annual Best SFD Event Competition, and marketing Software Freedom Day, Culture Freedom Day, and Hardware Freedom Day as well as many other things. Hundreds of teams around the world manage the local celebrations and help to send out an educational global message. So do drop by and attend an SFD, CFD and HFD events nearby!
Digital Freedom Foundation
Hong Kong
China
DFF is run by a Board of Directors. The Board of Directors meets regularly with an IRC conference to discuss various topics pertaining to the regular activities of Digital Freedom Foundation. The minutes to these meetings are posted publicly on the website. The Board has five elected members and can be contacted through our contact form or contacted on info(at)digitalfreedominternational(dot)org
Fred is our President since 2010. He is a founding member and former President of the Beijing GNU/LUG, member of China Open Source Promotion Union, co-organizer of many international FOSS events in China such as Linux Developer Symposium (2008), the Gnome.Asia Summit, OOoCon 2008 and local SFD. Fred is now focusing on FOSS in Education. The rest of the time he is assisted in his tasks at DFI (SFI) with all the board members and of course the happy members of the now famous BLUG!
Outside of work, Fred likes surfing, skiing, diving, rock climbing, reading books. He is also a advocate of animal protection and he has a cockatoo, a Alexandrine Parakeet, three iguanas and five turtles.
HIs blog: http://fred.dao2.com
Mathieu has been involved in Free Software since 2008, when he became a Fedora contributor. Since 2012 he has been working on considerably improving the Linux support of Chinese input methods used in Hong Kong.
When he is not hacking, Mathieu enjoys reading, hiking, not watching TV, and wishing he could ski more than once a year.
His blog: http://blog.fedora-fr.org/bochecha
Pockey has been serving the board since late 2009. She was also a board member of SFDChina and China OSS Promotion Union and the VP and then President of Beijing GNU/LUG, VP of Greenboard open education, founding member of GNOME.Asia and Beijing GNOME User Group as well as leader of TechWomen and College FOSS Group. In 2007, she led and organized a SFD event at Beijing Tsinghua university and won the best event competition, Then she supported three SFD events in 2008, founded sfdChina together with other SFD advocates in China, they had around 80 SFD events in China 2009 and 60 SFD events in 2010.
Pockey has been contributing to DFF with meeting minutes, wiki / website contents generation, graphic designs on advertising items and website graphics and contents and of course marketing the three days and other DFF projects to the world.
Her blog: http://pockey.dao2.com
Julien joined Digital Freedom Foundation in 2013. On top of contributing to DFF, he has been devoting his time in creating and deploying a free software solution in poor schools in China. He is also a core member of the Beijing Linux User Group. During his spare time he loves hacking on hardware.
His blog: http://julien.greenboard.org/
As a founder of Software Freedom Day, Moquist is also our treasurer and vice president. He is the CIO of the Virtual Learning Academy Charter School. He has a few years of experience with Linux and other *NIXy operating systems, but mostly he's focused right now on Moodle, a GPL Learning Management System.
His blog: http://moquist.blogspot.com
He remembers driving past a retail store that he knew had piles of AOL CDs lying around, and he thought to himself that a CD filled with software such as Open Office, Firefox, and the GIMP would be of vastly greater value to the public. He planned to burn such CDs and try to get permission to distribute them at the retail store in question.
After contacting his local LUG regarding this idea he was referred to TheOpenCD project, which maintains a CD of high-quality Free Software for Windows that matched Matt's (so far vague) vision. Matt proposed the idea of an international day of handing out Free Software CDs in TheOpenCD forums, and project leader Henrik Omma and project contributor Phil Harper both shared this vision and began collaborating immediately. After considering several proposals of dates, names, and logistics, Henrik, Phil, and Matt agreed on "Software Freedom Day" because they believed that ultimately, everyone without a vested interest in proprietary software can unite to educate the worldwide public about the ideals of Software Freedom and the practical benefits of Free Software. August 28th, 2004, was the first annual Software Freedom Day.
Henrik, Phil, and Matt recruited Fred Noronha and Jules Sidenburg to have the required total of five board members to found a non-profit corporation in the state of New Hampshire, USA.
Since that time the board has been pleased to welcome Sidsel Jensen, Joe O.A Olutuase, Benjamin Mako Hill, Robert Schumann, Pia Waugh, Frederic Muller and many more who bring a wealth of energy and experience to the organization.
With Frederic Muller being SFI President for consecutive two years, he came up with an idea of having SFI to operate under the name of Digital Freedom Foundation. It is without a doubt that the Free Software movement has spread to new territories beyond the realm of software itself but intimately linked and equally important to Free Software. SFI, or from now on DFF, and the teams celebrating SFD have gradually taken note of this phenomenon over the previous years and need to adopt new strategies as both the audience and the subject matters are very spread in nature.
End of 2011 saw the SFI board validating an ambitious plan for 2012 and 2013 and this plan begins with our new (DBA) name: Digital Freedom Foundation. Let's wish us all the best in these new adventures!
