Today is the new selected date for Hardware Freedom Day. We did a community survey a few months back and that was by far the most popular time. While our website is back up the wiki and registration are still down though. Considering the status we're hoping to get things back up and encourage people who missed the date to celebrate a HFD on their schedule. Following up our mail list you may know there are events in Barcelona and India or can simply ping us there.

Thank you all and happy HFD!

Today is Document Freedom Day. As in the past 8 years we celebrate DFD on the last Wednesday of March all around the world. While the date is recommended this year DFD is being celebrated from March 16th to April 5th so far (we' re still getting new registration as of this writing) .

DFD is the international day to celebrate and raise awareness of Open Standards. Open Standards goes beyond essays and spreadsheets and covers all digital formats from artwork, sheet and recorded music, email, or statistics. They provide freedom from data lock-in and the subsequent supplier lock-in.

Today people around the globe come together to run local events and let the public know about freedom of information accessibility. Join us by attending an event close to you, help spreading the word or see other ways of how to get involved.

Free and Open Source Software has come a long way since its inception and while we're celebrating SFD for the twelth time, the FSF is celebrating its 30th anniversary. Every software company now tends to use Free and Open Source Software but unfortunately that has just set the Software more as a commodity with very little benefit for advocacy, education or awareness. And so, in a world with Free Software used almost everywhere very few people notice or even care.

Software Freedom Day is here to tell people why we need to remind ourselves of the importance of Software Freedom and to get all the communities together to celebrate and introduce their philosophy to newcomers. Probably more than ever we need to go out and demonstrate the great many things that Free Software has done and enables everyone to do.

As usual events are listed on the SFD Map and should there be no event in your area you can always get together and run one in the upcoming few weeks. On top of all the good things Free Software brings we would also like to remind people that a good way to get started can be through Outreachy, a remote internships in Free and Open Source Software open to everyone regardless of their origins or differences. The next round of internships is from December 7 to March 7 with applications deadline on November 2.

Finally we would like to thank all the people making SFD possible and that is our sponsors like the Google Open Source Programs Office, Linode, the Free Software Foundation and our various supporters in the media and community arena. But of course more importantly all the various Free Software communities from Google Developer Groups to Free Software Groups, GNU/Linux User Groups and the various universities interested in Free Software among them.

So, Happy Software Freedom Day to all of you!

The Digital Freedom Foundation is very happy to announce that registration of the twelfth edition of Software Freedom Day just opened. While the wiki has been ready for some times and a few teams started to create pages registration was another story. In fact our infrastructure needs updates and we still haven't found way to do that easily.

Now as far as Free Software is concerned while we see more projects adopting Free Software licenses we also feel end-users still struggle with their proprietary operating systems. At the same time both hardware and software seems a lot more integrated and in some fields it seems that you can just print something with your Free 3D printers, order some kind of Free Hardware controllers online, flash them, hack them and get a complete and finish product running (or flying, or...). We're involved here with people who had no special interest in Free Software or Hardware and discovered it through pursuing their hobbies, and they just love it!

On the sponsorship side we have unfortunately lost Canonical financially but they are still providing the mailing list infrastructure (snif snif.. they were our first sponsors). Google and Linode are still supporting us luckily and we are exploring new ventures (though nothing confirmed at this stage).

So as usual registration happens after you have created your event page on the wiki. We have an exaustive guide here for newcomers and for the others who need help, the SFD-Discuss mailing is probably the best place to get prompt support. As usual we will come back with more details things to do or worth mentioning to bring inspiration and motivation to the celebration on the sfd-discuss mailing list.

So get ready to celebrate and happy preparations to all!

And to continue this busy week in announcements we have just opened Education Freedom Day registration, scheduled on March 21st, 2015. For its second edition EFD has been moved to March to facilitate its celebration in both the south of the planet and China (at least...) and we hope to cater to more events this year.

As usual for all our Freedom celebrations the process is similar, you get together and decide to organize an event, then create a page in our wiki and register your team. As the date approaches you get to put more information in your wiki page (or on your organization website which is linked from the wiki) such as the date and time, the location and what people can expect to see.

Education Freedom Day is really the opportunity to review all the available Free Educational Resources available, how they have improved since last year and what you should start planning to implement to deploy in the coming months. More importantly it is the celebration of what is available and letting people aware of it!

So prepare well and see you all in two months to celebrate Education Freedom Day!