Roughly 200 teams from more than 60 countries worldwide organised local activities to raise awareness for document freedom and open standards. To support the initiatives surrounding the first day to celebrate document liberation, DFD starter packs containing a DFD flag, t-shirts and leaflets have been sent to the first 100 registered teams over the past weeks.

In a world where records are increasingly kept in electronic form, open standards are crucial for valuable information to outlive the application in which it was initially generated. The question of document freedom has severe repercussions for freedom of choice, competition, markets and the sovereignty of countries and its governments. “We are very happy about the response and activities that teams around the world have scheduled,” said Ivan Jelic, DFD coordinator. “Activities we have heard about range from local speeches and information events to prizes being given to governmental bodies that adopted good policies in the field of document freedom and open standards. It will be a challenge to document everything that is taking place today,” added Jelic.

“Who controls your valuable information? This question has become central for the distribution of power and wealth in the networked society,” explained Georg Greve, president, Free Software Foundations Europe (FSFE). “Document freedom is about giving you control of your information, it is about giving governments control of its public records, and it is about freedom of choice. You can give yourself that freedom today by switching to one of the many free software applications that support the Open Document Format (ODF) and that runs on many different platforms,” shared Greve.

Read the complete announcement in MeriNews.