26 March 2008: Today is the world’s first Document Freedom Day. The Document Freedom Day (DFD) is a global day for Document Liberation. Roughly 200 teams from more than 60 countries worldwide are organising local activities to raise awareness for Document Freedom and Open Standards. The DFD was initiated and is supported by a group of organisations and companies, including, but not limited to the Free Software Foundation Europe, ODF Alliance, OpenForum Europe, IBM, Red Hat and Sun Microsystems, Inc.
“We’re proud to support this global effort to encourage open and inclusive information exchange,” said Marino Marcich, Managing Director, OpenDocument Format Alliance. “Document freedom means creating, exchanging, and preserving your electronic documents without having to buy software from a particular vendor.”
“Data lock-in and subsequent vendor lock-in are some of the most severe issues users are facing today,” says FSFE president Georg Greve. “Yet most people only realise this connection when it is too late and they have effectively lost control over their own data. We are supporting the Document Freedom Day to help raise awareness for this issue by starting with something that affects pretty much all users of computers: text documents, spreadsheets and presentations.”
“Free document formats and open standards are important elements in the continued expansion of the global open source community,” said Tom Rabon, executive vice president, Corporate Affairs at Red Hat. “Red Hat strongly supports Document Freedom Day and encourages participation by all who look forward to the day when documents are controlled by those who own them, not necessarily by those who create the technology to access those documents.”
Simon Phipps, Chief Open Source Officer, Sun Microsystems stated, “As I explained in my paper “Freedom to Leave”, it’s fundamental in the emerging market for people to be free to use any software they desire to handle their data. I fully support the goals of Document Freedom.”
Alexandre Oliva of the Free Software Foundation Latin America (FSFLA) comments: “When you save your documents using a Free Open Standard format such as ODF, you’re also saving your own future, ensuring your continued ability to access, decode and convert their contents.”
Graham Taylor Director of OpenForum Europe: “OpenForum Europe applauds the announcement of Document Freedom Day. The whole essence of ‘openness’ is captured by the right of users, citizens, governments… to be able to freely access and exchange documents today and in the future. Nothing gives greater meaning to the prevalent danger of lock-in to proprietary solutions, and for the need for Government to act now.”
The full list of DFD supporting groups can be found at http://documentfreedom.org/Who
The list of DFD teams is available at http://documentfreedom.org/Category:Teams
