-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Dear List of OKFN,
I am Erik and I work for the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) [1]. We are a non-profit organisation that is dedicated to the furthering of Free Software and working for freedom in the emerging digital society. Some days ago I had the chance to meet Beatrice Martini [2] and we had some exchange of ideas. She was very interested in our Document Freedom campaign that comes with an international day to celebrate the use of Open Standards. As it is a decentralised campaign that has its focus on local activities, she told me to send a mail to this list to engage some of you to participate - - hence, I'll give it a try : ) What is document freedom? Have you ever been stuck with some data that you have not been able to open because it was in a format that needs some specific kind of software to open it? Can you imagine that the same things happen each day tens of thousands of times? Can you imagine how much knowledge exchange doesn't happen just because sender and receiver (intentionally or not) are using different data formats? Can you imagine how much knowledge future generations will lose if we keep on using proprietary, closed data formats that one day no one will ever be able to open because the company behind it had business secrets and patents on it but then got bankrupt? Open Standards on the other hand are data formats that have an open documentation and everyone is free to use or implement it in its own software. The first characteristic (open documentation) guarantees that now and even in a hundred of years everybody interested can understand the data format and read it. The second characteristic (free to use) guarantees that now and in even in a hundred years everybody is free to write some piece of software to give everyone else the ability to read a specific piece of data. That is why everyone and every public institution - education and administration, e.g. - should use Open Standards. This is exactly the point where our document freedom campaign comes in. Every year on the last Wednesday of March, we run a global campaign that is called "Document Freedom Day" [3]. The concept of the campaign and its aim is to raise awareness of the usefulness of Open Standards. Therefore we encourage all kind of local groups to organise an event that highlights the importance of the use of Open Standards. Last year there have been more than 50 events in more than 20 countries [4]. This year, Document Freedom Day (DFD) will be on the *27th of March 2013*. The most important part of the whole campaign is done by guys like you and me! In order to celebrate information accessibility and Open Standards, we heavily depend on local activity on public places, in universities, in hackerspaces or everywhere you can imagine. I am pretty sure that you have very good ideas what you can do to raise some attention. You can also combine your activity with promotion for the OKFN. If you are interested now, please have a look at some ideas of what you can do [5] and feel free to support your event with our promotion material [6] that you can order for no cost. You can order the material on the webpage or just reply to this email. Finally, if you are planning some activity, don't forget to register your event on our events page [7]. Thank you very much for your attention. Your participation in DFD can make the difference! Thank you very much in advance, Erik PS: If you have any questions - don't hesitate to ask me [1] http://www.fsfe.org [2] http://okfn.org/members/bmartini/ [3] http://www.documentfreedom.org [4] for more information see last year's report: http://www.documentfreedom.org/news/2012/news-20120403-01.en.html [5] http://www.documentfreedom.org/getinvolved.en.html [6] http://www.documentfreedom.org/promotion.en.html [7] http://www.documentfreedom.org/events/events.en.html - -- Erik Albers | https://fsfe.org/about/albers/albers.en.html Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) - Campaigns & Community Support us now: https://fsfe.org/support/?eal Free as in Freedom! -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://www.enigmail.net/ iQIcBAEBAgAGBQJRLg44AAoJEBho/C6GOdyByo0QALghuskHeF6CVpoAlGeLVgFM BhJ7HA4s/0gJZTCDMEazx7DlFXdn92zgqtG/Ek6juUOFRtV8OKLORgWDGfRCS6dt SbXRyGQwa/FRVI6yXwTdQYIOE/cPesxv+w82ivrmtv3mcJsclXSfRHUNSvrulk4p Eokd+ABxkPTKqixrDIjURm0Gf5ikvQavPpeLss+gvWCXHYuc1qHB3XSPvvUSH+Da 3uBEI//FyUnzlAOWecFot3o1Gf0a6tFPRUPFfr28CUkkuiT9LXLlmaG/8gh2EzJx 6WEcBb9SF51QNyIu57xl1Rs1bTN3LEDnj4TRP9lVVitL4t7S3uUJ+kt+ZxNUXjOK jXcf0xFExQFwXS3CeYm2xGBTc/YRvW1p93nj8+vhjlBS4kC9YtDyTLYAEJ51UzKE M6oxS20Nbr4nQ6TEWHfTtHRWsKyaF+ODPBr5wZ9fAtkVFzQRXdX8CoLNLTbZeODP TM2RfhUJfvE4Ms4/NxiON4H72sMhhOpDsQH5o7KmdCy6EGhmOtGdFYf8VRDoZCXl 9fsR5+5G0OIkvlqU0USTR/mBnB5KfTD1ugXH6eErzKdhkjkTsK8R9LdV2S/zqanx BHjarOt3lWy9eMuNHJi6oUb44i+rU7BEos6SmpcMBgpQYzoiUPCgJqyjrkOlAxmJ x07F0nzYf6/aNYu0Gpc0 =B4GK -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ okfn-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/okfn-discuss Unsubscribe: http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/options/okfn-discuss
