Another year and another celebration! It has been eleven years now that we are celebrating Software Freedom worldwide and thanks to the many teams around the world (which not all appear on the map, check the wiki to be sure), our sponsors and partners of which Google, Canonical, Linode, the Free Software Foundation have been supporting us for many years and hopefully many years to come, as well as Lulzbot, our newest supporter.

For those of you not familiar with, or doubtful about Free and Open Source Software, this is the day to go and check at any event nearby what are the latest developments and if your problem could not simply be resolved by using Free and Open Source Software. It is also the day to understand better what Free and Open Source Software is about, and why it has been created. Because beyond solving computational problems Free and Open Source Software is here to put you back in control of your computer, and let you understand what your machine is really doing! So wait no more and head toward a celebration nearby!

Happy Software Freedom Day!

With a bit of delay, the Digital Freedom Foundation is very happy to announce that registration of the eleventh edition of Software Freedom Day opened early August. This year we are unfortunately unable to ship any goodies for the pre-registered teams: as we have mentioned before, our involvment with the Cambodian system of education required us to relocate. Being happy owners of a few special animals (CITES-II listed species) we would not have moved without them. This took us about 3-4 months to make it happen and we arrived in Phnom Penh end of May. We then had to look for a place to live, get our furnitures out of the customs and a member of our team got hospitalized for ten days in July. With all this, identifying new suppliers for the schwag just could not happen. Nevertheless, SFD teams have been very patient and nice with us and hopefully SFD 2014 will not be too much impacted by this.

So as usual registration happens after you have created your event page on the wiki. We have an exhaustive guide here for newcomers and for the others who need help, the SFD-Discuss mailing is probably the best place to get prompt support. We will come back with more details regarding sponsors, things to do or worth mentioning to bring inspiration and motivation to the celebration.

So get ready to celebrate and happy preparations to all!

Over the past few months we have been busy introducing the Greenboard project in a few places, namely at Teach for China in Shantou and at FOSSASIA in Phnom Penh to name just two places. Both have been very interested in the concept, its flexibility, past deployments and more importantly using it within their environment.

We are now working on refurbishing a classroom of sixty computers in a school not too far from Shantou, classroom which was installed ten years ago and has never ever been used. Of course not all the machines start (in fact only 15 out of 60) but the room is properly set up and looks like a very nice place to start in the region. The people we are working with from Teach for ChinaTeach for China are very motivated as well which brings a lot to the equation.

On the Cambodian side, the discussions we had with USAID and the representative from the Ministry of Education were very positive too. We will have further discussions during April and need to start checking the translation status of all the components we use. Luckily the person in charge of packaging Greenboard happens to be Cambodian too!

All in all we are pretty excited about what's coming ahead of us and will work hard to make it happen. Stay connected to learn more as the projects move forward!

As Culture Freedom Day preparation is ongoing we got the chance to meet up with Jon Philips from the Open Clipart Library, a good friend of ours and a strong supporter of our events. Jon kindly authored a video to support us and encourage participants to take a closer look at the Open Clipart Library new website design and functionalities. So without further ado we will let Jon do the presentation and thank him and the Open Clipart team for their support!

So don't forget to use and showcase the Open Clipart Library at your event!

Last Monday LulZbot announced the 3D printer winners. Instead of selecting eight they actually picked twelve out of all the submissions, from which five are out of the USA. First we would really like to thank LulZbot for the generosity and offering more printers than planned. Second while we are a bit late on the announcement, all the competition participants did receive an email early Monday morning to let them know the results, which is a very nice thing to do. Now it is just a matter of time before the winners can enjoy their new tool and take part in the other contests LulZbot runs regularly.

For the others you can either buy one now at a discounted price or wait until the next opportunity to play again. Thank you all for participating!