Software Freedom Day (SFD) is a worldwide celebration of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). Their goal in this celebration is to educate the worldwide public about of the benefits of using high quality FOSS in education, in government, at home, and in business — in short, everywhere! The non-profit company Software Freedom International coordinates SFD at a global level, providing support, giveaways and a point of collaboration, but volunteer teams around the world organize the local SFD events to impact their own communities.

Software Freedom Day for 2010 will be held on Saturday, September 18 and registration for teams wishing to participate has opened. But if your team would like access to SFD giveaways, get in quick as only registrations received within the next 10 days will be eligible.

If you register after this period, you can still participate in SFD, but won’t be able to get any of the official swag.

Forming a Local SFD Team can be a fun, effective community building experience for your local user group and community. Software Freedom Day is an outreach day where you can inspire newcomers with the values and quality of Free Software and communicate the broader issues of Software Freedom through a variety of activities of your choice. Is there something locally relevant to your country or region that you need to express? Is there some great local success story you want to tell?

Software Freedom Day is your chance to stand united with the entire Free Software world with what you care about. Freedom.

Registration

First, check to see if a team isn’t already registered for your area. If there is, contact them and see how you can join and help them. Otherwise, start your own.
Check out the SFD Start Guide, which tells you the basics of what you need to do to get up and running.
Then setup your team page. This will were “the public” will be able to find out where your team will be conducting your SFD Event.
Finally register your Software Freedom Day Team.

Start Promoting

Once you have registered your team, start promoting Software Freedom Day and in particular your own event to your members and your local community.

You can download the official Software Freedom Day 2010 logo and other artwork from the SFD website and various presentations and other resources can also be downloaded for you to use.

Start contacting your local newspapers, community radio and TV stations now to ensure they can provide coverage before the event and even have a reporter and photographer at the event itself.

FOSS Disc of the Month

AppleUsers.org will be compiling a DVD of Free and Open Source Software as our September 2010 Disc of the Month. It will be available for all Australian Apple User Groups to download as a Disc Image and burn your own copies to distribute at your SFD event.