The Software Freedom Day (SFD) represents a worldwide and annual celebration of Free Software and Open Source. This celebration focuses on the public education with the special aim of increasing interest in the great variety of benefits considering the use of Free Software and Open Source. Strictly speaking we are talking about the use of Free Software in high-quality education systems, government, and general business as well as at home – in other words, everywhere!
The Software Freedom Day was established in 2004. The first celebration was held on 28 August of the very same year. It was a great event in which participated over 70 different teams. At that time 70 teams was a huge number making the whole Software Freedom Day absolutely unique and spectacular. Since that time this annual celebration event has grown in both popularity and organizers. Strictly speaking, the Software Freedom Day in 2010 was characterized to have had more than 1,000 different teams participating in the event.
Since the year 2006 the Software Freedom Day has annually taken place on the third Saturday of September. Because of this special date, it happened that unfortunately the Software Freedom Day occasionally coincided with the parodic holiday “International Talk Like a Pirate Day”, which is annually held on 19 September.
Software Freedom International (SFI) represents a non-profit organization that coordinates the Software Freedom Day on a global level. Strictly speaking the Software Freedom International works as a so-called official organizer and legal body of the Software Freedom Day providing support, giveaways as well as a special point of collaboration and handling both sponsorship contracts and donations. Furthermore there are lots of volunteer teams around the whole world that organize local events considering the Software Freedom Day.
In this context it should be mentioned that the Software Freedom International has successfully earned a so-called tax-exempt status in the United States of America. There it is officially registered with the aim to make donations tax-deductible. Concerning the name “Software Freedom International” it can be said that is name was chosen in order to make in possible to easily distinguish the organizational and legal body from the annual celebration event “Software Freedom Day”.