Document Freedom Day Coming March 31

by Joe Brockmeier - Mar. 02, 2010Comments (0)

Old documents never die, but sometimes they can't be read. Wednesday, March 31st, is Document Freedom Day -- a day for groups all around the world to raise awareness about open document formats and open standards, and to ensure that no documents are left behind due to proprietary formats.

DFD is celebrated every year on the last Wednesday in March. DFD started in 2008, when more than 200 teams in 60 countries kicked off the event to put the word on the streets about the importance of open formats for documents.

The situation for open formats and open documents seems far less dire than it did just a few years ago, but that doesn't mean that we're out of the woods entirely. Far too many organizations and institutions are saving critical information using proprietary formats that may or may not be readable by applications in 10 to 20 years.

Document Freedom Day is currently being driven by ANSOL, Fundación Vía Libre, and the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE), and sponsored by Google and Oracle, but the more the merrier. Organizations and volunteers looking to get in on the fun should contact DFD's campaign coordinator Fernanda G. Weiden, who also serves as the vice president of FSFE and organizers of FISL.

Suggested activities for 2010 include distributing flyers, organizing workshops and talks, and lobbying local officials about the importance of open document formats. This sort of event is easy to plan, but hard to sustain if the word isn't spread. If nothing else, advocates are encouraged to blog about the campaign and spread the word via banners and so on. Artwork and materials are available on the Document Freedom Day site, in open formats, of course.

Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier is a freelance writer and editor with more than 10 years covering IT. Formerly the openSUSE Community Manager for Novell, Brockmeier has written for Linux Magazine, Sys Admin, Linux Pro Magazine, IBM developerWorks, Linux.com, CIO.com, Linux Weekly News, ZDNet, and many other publications. Brockmeier is also a FLOSS advocate and participates in several projects, including GNOME as the PR team lead. You can reach Zonker at jzb@zonker.net and follow him on Twitter.