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About DFF

Started in 2004 to promote Free Software with Software Freedom Day, Digital Freedom Foundation later registered as a charity in the USA under the Software Freedom International name in 2007, is the non-profit organization at the origin of Software Freedom Day, Education Freedom Day and Hardware Freedom Day. The name change came progressively starting in 2011 in order to reflect the changes in our directions and also because we had to change registration territory.

In 2016 DFF has taken the responsibility of running the Document Freedom Day to promote open standards to each corner of the world.

Our Scope

DFF has transitioned over the past ten years from a marketing events organizer to advocate the user of Free Software to an organization which has broaden its scope to digital knowledge in general covering free software, open hardware and content (OER, free culture), and assembled or created all the required pieces to drive an educational project aimed at educating the people in needs. 

As a worldwide organization with hundreds of local groups and associations taking part in our efforts, we hope to extend our reach into the Open Education field to every corner of the world in the long run.

DFF handles sponsorship contracts, official team registrations, sending out schwags to teams, the annual Best SFD Event Competition, and marketing Software Freedom Day, Document Freedom Day, Education Freedom Day and Hardware Freedom Day. Hundreds of teams around the world manage the local celebrations and help to send out an educational global message. So do drop by and attend an SFD, DFD, EFD and HFD events nearby!

Our Vision

Our vision is to provide access to knowledge via technology in which everybody can participate and learn from. 

Our mission

The mission of the DFF is to meet a tremendous need for technology in today's society by providing computes equipped with Free Software, content and a curriculum which can equally serve young children in needs, adult looking for a knowledge upgrade or anyone else interested.

All the software and content is available online and created together together with interested parties including the teachers providing the classes so that anybody can reuse the solution and adapt it to anywhere else.

Through its international days DFF encourages local communities around the world to educate the general public about the movement and bring the message forward.



Board of Directors

DFF is run by a Board of Directors who meets regularly with an IRC conference to discuss various topics pertaining to the regular activities of Digital Freedom Foundation. The remaining of the time we us a mailing list to cover day-to-day operations. The Board has elected members and can be contacted through our contact form or contacted on info(at)digitalfreedomfoundation(dot)org



Frederic Muller, President


Frederic Muller

Fred is our President since 2010. He is a founding member and former President of the Beijing GNU/LUG, member of China Open Source Promotion Union, co-organizer of many international FOSS events in China such as Linux Developer Symposium (2008), the Gnome.Asia Summit, OOoCon 2008 and local SFD. Fred is now focusing on FOSS in Education. The rest of the time he is assisted in his tasks at DFI (SFI) with all the board members and of course the happy members of the now famous BLUG! 

Outside of work, Fred likes surfing, skiing, diving, rock climbing, reading books. He is also a advocate of animal protection and he has a cockatoo, a Alexandrine Parakeet, three iguanas and five turtles. 

His blog: http://fred.dao2.com

 

Patrick Sinz, Director


Patrick SinzPatrick has been involved in Free Software since 1983, when he was curating the “kit du développeur Vincennois at the university of Paris 8” (distributed on 1/4” tapes). He is a board member of the AFUL (Association Francophone des utilisateurs de Logiciels Libre) and a founding member of SCLibre (Software y Cultura Libre) in Santa Cruz de la Sierra (Bolivia).

His professional interests cover Free Software for eGovernment, 3D printing, complex infrastructures and the sane and efficient use of Big and/or Open Data, he organizes the Data Tuesday Barcelona networking event.

Outside of work, Patrick reads, cooks, bakes, sculpts, listen to live music and can be found where good food meets decent beverages, he has two fast growing children.

His infrequent blog: http://www.sinz.fr

His article about Digital Freedoms: Next steps...

 

Pockey Lam, Vice President


Pockey Lam Pockey has been serving the board since 2009. She was also the President of the Beijing GNU/LUG and a Board Member of the SFDChina and China OSS Promotion Union. Previously, she co-founded the Greenboard Open Education Project and the GNOME.Asia Summit, the Beijing GNOME User Group as well as founded the TechWomen and College FOSS Group in China. In 2007, she led and organized a SFD event at Beijing Tsinghua university and won the best SFD event competition, Then she supported three SFD events in 2008, founded sfdChina together with other SFD advocates in China, they had around 80 SFD events in China 2009 and 60 SFD events in 2010.

Pockey has given talks to different Free and Open Source conferences including the WikiSym + OpenSym 2013 in Hong Kong, FOSSASIA 2014 in Phnom Penh, GNOME Asia Summit in Vietnam, Bangalore and Taiwan, and many Software Freedom Day events in Beijing, Shantou and Phnom Penh.

In order to spend all this time volunteering and making a better world, Pockey works as director in dao², an information technology company she co-founded in 2005 to help business owners achieve their goals through technology.

Her blog: http://pockey.dao2.com

Her company: https://www.dao2.com

 

Julien Forgeat, Director


JulienJulien joined Digital Freedom Foundation in 2013. On top of contributing to DFF, he has been devoting his time in creating and deploying a free software solution in poor schools in China. He is also a core member of the Beijing Linux User Group. During his spare time he loves hacking on hardware.

 





How did DFF (SFI) begin?

 

Sometime in January of 2004, Matt Oquist concluded that...


  1. Free Software had improved to the point of being suitable for public use, and 
  2. Public ignorance was one of the primary roadblocks to public acceptance. 

He remembers driving past a retail store that he knew had piles of AOL CDs lying around, and he thought to himself that a CD filled with software such as Open Office, Firefox, and the GIMP would be of vastly greater value to the public. He planned to burn such CDs and try to get permission to distribute them at the retail store in question.

After contacting his local LUG regarding this idea he was referred to TheOpenCD project, which maintains a CD of high-quality Free Software for Windows that matched Matt's (so far vague) vision. Matt proposed the idea of an international day of handing out Free Software CDs in TheOpenCD forums, and project leader Henrik Omma and project contributor Phil Harper both shared this vision and began collaborating immediately. After considering several proposals of dates, names, and logistics, Henrik, Phil, and Matt agreed on "Software Freedom Day" because they believed that ultimately, everyone without a vested interest in proprietary software can unite to educate the worldwide public about the ideals of Software Freedom and the practical benefits of Free Software. August 28th, 2004, was the first annual Software Freedom Day.

Henrik, Phil, and Matt recruited Fred Noronha and Jules Sidenburg to have the required total of five board members to found a non-profit corporation in the state of New Hampshire, USA.

Since that time the board has been pleased to welcome Sidsel Jensen, Joe O.A Olutuase, Benjamin Mako Hill, Robert Schumann, Pia Waugh, Frederic Muller and many more who bring a wealth of energy and experience to the organization.  

 

Digital Freedoms, Education Freedom Day and more to come...


Software Freedom International, started in 2004 to promote Free Software with Software Freedom Day. With Frederic Muller being SFI President since 2010, he came up with an idea of operating SFI under the name of Digital Freedom International. It is without a doubt that the Free Software movement has spread to new territories beyond the realm of software itself but intimately linked and equally important to Free Software. The teams celebrating SFD have gradually taken note of this phenomenon over the previous years and need to adopt new strategies as both the audience and the subject matters are very spread in nature.

Since then, DFF launched Culture Freedom Day, Hardware Freedom Day and Education Freedom Day as additional days to raise awareness of open educational resources and open licenses of any creative work and content.

In parallel the Greenboard project was started by DFF board members in 2007, is  now operating under the umbrella of DFF. Greenboard being a China-based project, at the end of 2012 it is decided to have a board membership closer to our activities and an organization registered in our region. Therefore the decision was made to create a charity in Hong Kong to facilitate all our administrative matters and be able to spend more time on working on our goals. To represent our goal i.e. promoting access to knowledge via technology we renamed our organization Digital Freedom Foundation in 2013.