International Days
Software Freedom Day
Since its establishment in 2004, Software Freedom Day has became one of the biggest international day to celebrate Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). Hosted annually on third Saturday of September, the goal in this celebration is to educate the worldwide public about the benefits of using high quality FOSS in education, in government, at home, and in business -- in short, everywhere! We have grown from the 12 events worldwide in 2004 to a stable 500 events over the past 3 years and we also managed to attract a hundred entries to participate in the annual best event competition while producing and shipping around 250 event kits on a yearly basis. This is definitely very honorable for a fully volunteer-driven organization.
Culture Freedom Day
Free Culture is the logical extension of the Free Software philosophy applied to cultural and artistic work. Often celebrated during SFD, we decided to launch Culture Freedom Day (CFD) in 2012 as Free Culture creators don't seem to feel so concerned about the software itself. Having a specific event to raise awareness of free culture and open licenses for creative works helps to focus on those contributors and give them their own space. DFF has envisioned Culture Freedom Day as a day where Free Culture art is exhibited, as much as possible, and celebrated. Be it a photo exhibition, a concert, playing music in the streets or organization movie screening, as long as it is clear to the public that what you are showing is Free Culture you would be right on target. Of course a combination of all forms of Free Culture art is fine too, with short discussions about the definition of Free Culture, how to make one's work Free Culture and where to find Free Culture online. Culture Freedom Day is hosted annually every third Saturday of May.
Hardware Freedom Day
DFF launched Hardware Freedom Day (HFD) as a worldwide celebration of Open Hardware which is another evolution of the Free Software philosophy applied to physical stuff, where both code and design blueprints co-exist. However no one can deny that humankind has evolved through a DIY and hack & share-it culture until patents prevented us to do so. We hope to make use of HFD to remind people of the benefits of sharing knowledge of their hardware and hack together. HFD targets hackerspaces, computer clubs and technical colleges. With its first edition in 2013, DFF produced and shipped about 70 event kits to 36 countries to registered teams. In total 66 events were organized which is definitely a good number for the first year.
Education Freedom Day
Our current three international days celebrating and promoting Free Software, Culture and Hardware will be completed by a fourth day to enhance our efforts in education as well as bring light to the already existing hundreds of similar projects that the world counts today. The first instance of Education Freedom Day will be on January 18th, 2014. The creation of Education Freedom Day will enabled schools, colleges, institutions and universities to focus on a very applied side of Free Software in Education and OER. Obviously this is bringing the organization to a brand new level and we are just at the beginning of it!