In Slovenia, people are also celebrating Document Freedom Day. The new Fellowship Group is going to the Supreme court to thank them. Indeed, the Supreme Court, which also manages the IT for all the courts in Slovenia, publishes lots of documents for public use. The Sodna Praksa gives access to all court decisions since 1992.
Matija Šuklje explains: “Since it is of paramount importance that all these archives should be accessible by anybody as well as be in tact and readable for many generations to come, the courts decided that open standards and open formats are the only way to reach that goal. Along with that they made great use of open formats (ODF consisting of zipped XML files) as well as free software (OpenOffice amongst others) to automate many tasks. The Supreme court expressed a great gratitude that their work has been noted by the FSFE Fellowship group Slovenia and agreed to participate in the DFD celebration in the evening as well.”
The DFD celebration will begin at 18:00 in Kiberpipa/Cyberpipe and will consist of a few short (cca. 30 minutes) lectures on the matter and an open table where anybody will be able to ask and discuss open documents and open standards. After that we will continue to party with some refreshments and snacks — there might be another cake there as well
All around the world, teams of volunteers are organizing events to celebrate Document Freedom Day and raise awareness about Open Standards. Their message is simple: we want to communicate and to work together effectively. This message is addressed at companies like radio stations, or public bodies, administrations and government services.
We know that one of the advantage of Open Standars is that they guarantee sustainability to our documents and files. So this is not a surprise that the Japanese initiative MyOpenArchive is a promoter of DFD. MyOpenArchive advocates in favour of open access, and self-archiving for academic papers in Japan.
Finally, the Free Software team of OpenOffice.org, which uses the OpenDocument Format (ODF), are promoting the event. Alexandro Colorado, OpenOffice.org Spanish Community Manager is also giving an online conference to explain the benefits of Document Freedom.
Brazil is once more participating of DFD with activities in different cities, and a new thing: this year you can watch talks over the Internet!
The NGO Espirito Livre is organizing a conference on March 31st in Vitória/ES. The conference will include different talks, and goes on from 19:00 at the FAESA Auditorium. More details in portuguese at http://dfd.espiritolivre.org. The organizers are asking people to donate one kilo of non-perishable food as entrance fee. The food will be donated after the event.
For those not close by, 4Linux is preparing a web conference that can be accessed from all over the world. The speakers’ list include John “maddog” hall, president of Linux International, Jomar Silva, ODF Alliance representative in Brazil, and Clarisse Coppetti, Vice-President of Technology at Caixa Econômica Federal, one of the largest government banks in Brazil. The event happens on March 31st, at 19:00 Brazilian Standard Time at http://webclass.4linux.com.br/dimdim/webenv/dfd-view.html. More details on the conference at http://www.4linux.com.br/noticias/2010/boteconet_4linux_document_freedom_day.
You could be forgiven for thinking that Open Standards are a rather dull topic. Specifications are probably the most boring kind of reading known to man.Who will be able to read what you wrote? Who can you share documents with? Will you be able to read your own writings in the future, or will it all be locked into proprietary file formats developed by companies that have long since disappeared, leaving you sitting on a pile of digital toxic waste?
Yet the politics of Open Standards are far from boring. Right ahead of Document Freedom Day, not one but two hot issues are flaring up in the European Union.
The first is the European Interoperability Framework (EIF). This used to be a recommendation by the European Commission to use Open Standards and Free Software in the public sector. The Commission is currently revising the text. FSFE has seen the latest version, and it looks bad. Instead of showing European countries how to make their public sector IT systems work together thanks to Open Standards, as the original EIF did, the current version basically says “do whatever you feel like”. If the EU member states adopt this version, there will be no further push for Open Standards and open document formats in their public sector.
The second issue that is hot in Europe right now is the Digital Agenda. Neelie Kroes, newly installed as head of the Directorate General (somewhat like a ministry) for the Information Society (INFSO), is proposing an ambitious policy framework. The version we have seen talks about the importance of Open Standards and public sector procurement:
Procurement practices and rules for ICT products and services must be adapted to ensure that public authorities – including EU institutions – can make the best use of the full range of open standards. Interoperability across all policy fields, notably eHealth, eGovernment, Green ICT, and cloud computing-related initiatives must also systematically be promoted.
There is also an explicit link to the EIF revision:
An update of the European Interoperability Framework will be an important step in this regard.
As far as we know, this sort of thing doesn’t sit well with everyone in the European Commission. DG INFSO appears to be under huge pressure from other DGs to remove the reference to Open Standards from the text, and make it less ambitious overall.
FSFE is active on both issues, talking to policy makers and calling public attention to the problem. What’s at stake here is the fate of Open Standards in Europe’s public sector in the coming years.
This makes Document Freedom Day even more important. This is a day where we can show why Open Standards and open document formats in the public sector matter to us all.
This is just what people in Romania have done last week. Their public administrations are using proprietary file formats, making life difficult for Free Software users. So these activists went and told their public administration: “I can’t read your documents!”
It looks like they had a great day out! More images here.
I am now very much looking forward to Wednesday to meet the people from Deutschlandradio in Berlin. They said, they are also looking forward to get our famous DFD tart.
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To spread the knowledge about Open Standards and Ogg-Vorbis in particular, we would like to ask you to make Ogg-Vorbis your topic for April. What does that mean? Here some ideas for this month:
Write a letter to a radio station and ask them for an Ogg vorbis stream
When you are shopping, ask the shop assistants to only show you all the media players who are able to play Ogg vorbis (and/or flac) (I already did that several times )
Send Ogg-Vorbis audio files to your friends and help them to install Free Software to play it (e.g. Video Lan Client).
Try to always say “Ogg-Vorbis player” instead of “mp3 player” in that month. I am sure people will ask you what that is. So you can explain.
Beside that I would also be very interested if you find out which radio stations have introduced Ogg-Vorbis streams at what date. If you have other ideas what you can do, share them in your blogs, microblog about them with the hashtags #roggon / #playogg, or share your ideas on our public dicsussion lists. So help us to rOgg On in April.
This year three DFD groups will have a joint activity in Berlin, Cologne, and Vienna. I will not yet tell you all the details but let me say: There will be a winner of our price in Germany and one in Austria, the price will be a DFD tart, there will be lot of fun, and we will rOGG.
In Berlin and Cologne the groups will meet at about 14:45. Exact times and places will be announced on the mailing lists below. So everybody interested to participate in one of those cities, please contact:
Giunto ormai alla terza edizione, dopo il riuscito evento “sperimentale” al Centro Polifunzionale di Opera (MI), FSUGItalia si prepara a celebrare il DFD2010, tornado alla formula classica utilizzata durante tutti i vari SFD, ovvero, all’interno di una scuola.
L’evento si terrà presso i locali del Liceo Scientifico Statale “A.Volta”, vicolo san Matteo 8,06049 Spoleto (PG), il 27 Marzo 2010 (e non il 31 come previsto da calendario internazionale, per venire incontro alla chiusura per vacanze pasquali delle scuole superiori).
Il Document Freedom Day è la giornata mondiale dedicata agli standard aperti per i documenti. L’evento è organizzato a livello internazionale dalla Free Software Foundation Europe (http://www.fsfe.org).
Con “standard aperti” si caratterizzano quegli standard, le cui specifiche sono aperte a tutti, e su cui tutti possono lavorare, interoperare, e collaborare, senza essere costretti ad affidarsi ad un unico monopolista detentore di uno standard “chiuso” (altrimenti definito “standard proprietario”). L’evento è indirizzato verso tutti gli standard per file digitali, quali musica, immagini, video, ma si concentra soprattutto sullo standard dei documenti. Ci sono una serie di valide motivazioni per portare ODF nelle scuole e farlo conoscere sia ai professori sia agli studenti, che vanno viste in confronto tra l’alternativa proprietaria e quella aperta.
Saranno previsti interventi mattutini di natura più teorica, ed interventi pomeridiani di natura più pratica.
Document Freedom Day is about local engagement. For that, we need your help!
If you and your friends or user group mates want to organize an activity in your home town, you can do that very easily, in just 3 steps.
1) Go to our team website, and check whether someone is not doing the same in your town. We want our campaigns to be as impacting as possible, therefore, joining efforts is a very good idea! If someone is already doing that, then you are already on the right track, and can skip steps 2 and 3.
2) At this point you should have got ideas on what to do. If you don’t, you can check our website. Talk to your friends, plan the activity, elect a coordinator and add information to our Teams Website. Subscribe to our teams’ mailing list.
3) Write a blog post about your activity, and send it to the list. We’ll publish it in our Document Freedom Blog, and help you to spread the word about what you will do.
If you need any additional help, contact us! We’ll be glad to help you!
In case you have no idea what this blog post is about, then you might want to visit our website: http://www.documentfreedom.org/
FreieSoftwareOG is celebrating DFD by organizing a booth in front of a local computer shop, and distributing fliers on different topics: Document Freedom Day, Open Standards, Free Software, etc. They will also distribute Free Software live CDs, and have laptops running Free Software where customers from the shop can try out Free Software and Open Standards supporting applications.
Where?
They will be in front of Fun-Computer store
Marktplatz 19, 77652 Offenburg
Germany
When?
March 31st, from 9:00 to 16:00
More information, contact the organizers directly: kontakt -AT- freiesoftwareog -DOT- org
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