Document Freedom Day 2013 Celebrated In 30 Countries

jrepin writes "The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is running its annual Document Freedom Day campaign today to raise awareness of the importance of open standards. This year's Document Freedom Day involves over 50 groups from 30 countries and focuses on open standards in web-based streaming technologies, especially on increasing the awareness and usage of HTML5. This year's campaign is sponsored by Google and openSUSE. To celebrate the Document Freedom Day April has published a poster to explain to software users, the interest of opting for 'open formats' to exchange and store their files."

Comments

is Steam an open standard? Netflix?

[Anonymous Coward]

Face it, software freedom is dead, it got traded for $4.99 copy of Half-Life and three episodes of Game Of Thrones.

I respect all your work RMS, but sadly people would rather be entertained than free...

Re:is Steam an open standard? Netflix?

[serviscope_minor]

Yep, it's true.

Someone I don't know paid $4.99 for something and my copy of Linux just folded up and stopped working. Due to the death of software freedom I had to install Windows on all my servers.

And I certainly did not post this comment from a free browser because that stopped working too.

Re:is Steam an open standard? Netflix?

[jedidiah]

I have 15 and 30 year old games that are perfectly playable under Linux despite being "evil and proprietary".

Re:is Steam an open standard? Netflix?

[interkin3tic]

If, in the future, you want to convince someone that software freedom is a good thing, or needs to be protected, you should pick your examples more carefully. You want to pick examples of closed software that people will go "Man, I HATE that!" Steam and netflix work against you here. You mention them, and I think "Hey, I like both of those things. Maybe closed source software isn't that bad?"

Instead of half life and steam, mention Sim City 4 and Origin. Instead of netflix, talk about trying to get the last olympics streaming through NBC.com. THOSE examples will elicit the reaction you're looking for. I think.

Re:is Steam an open standard? Netflix?

[ArcadeMan]

Come back to us in another 15 to 30 years. Those games won't even run on Windows.

Re:is Steam an open standard? Netflix?

[kermidge]

You mean, on LInux, the emulators will stop working? Ditto DOSBox? The ROM images will evaporate?

Re:is Steam an open standard? Netflix?

[ArcadeMan]

I mean today's game won't be working anymore in 15 to 30 years because the required servers will be long gone.

Re:is Steam an open standard? Netflix?

[kermidge]

Oh! Gotcha, hadn't thought of it, never played any games online yet. I think you're right. Unless the game's company turned over any server-side proprietary stuff and let a game's community take over.

Re:is Steam an open standard? Netflix?

[kermidge]

Yeah. Old players die off, new blood either doesn't know about 'good old games' or is too enthralled with new shiny, playership dwindles or company loses interest, stuff dies. While what makes even old games fun for players may vary, one of the abiding reasons seems to be good story-telling; for other games, the challenge of a good dungeon or skill (Star Raiders, for instance - steady hand, good reflexes, and a bit of planning).

Another peeve of mine is the suprising number of classic games that while apparently making no money for anyone are still locked up, rather than being released into public domain. Not only might it be interesting to see some of the code (how they packed so much game goodness into a small ROM or onto a floppy) but 'the community' could have a blast with tweaking, modding, classic-game tournaments.

I enjoyed the remakes of the King's Quest series, for instance; there was a lot of love poured into them. Not only are they fun to play, and not just for nostalgia's sake, but they're great for introducing young'uns to a whole style of gaming they might otherwise never see.

mp3 is "open"

[Anonymous Coward]

The poster/other information list mp3s as being closed format, which is technically true because patents are still held regarding them. However, there isn't really a precedent for the patent holders going after any of the open source mp3 encoders that exist (e.g. LAME), meaning that the mp3 format has free/open software that uses it...which is what these people are pushing for, right? Maybe I'm just nitpicking, but I think a push from mp3 to ogg is nigh-impossible as it is, so it seems kind of silly for them to list it as one of their "targets" so to speak, not to mention also kind of wrong.

Re:mp3 is "open"

[ArcadeMan]

And I laughed when I saw "RealAudio" listed. I haven't heard about those guys and their format in about a decade.

Re:Grammar fail in TFA

[mystikkman]

Or maybe they need to use the grammar check in Word :)

Re:10 people?

[Anonymous Coward]

How could 10 people be in 30 countries? The could maybe be in 20 if they were all straddling a border.

Re:10 people?

[mystikkman]

How could 10 people be in 30 countries? The could maybe be in 20 if they were all straddling a border.

They could be in tripoints. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tripoint http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tripoints

Re:Grammar fail in TFA

[jedidiah]

If your data is in a non-proprietary format, it really doesn't matter so much how proprietary the decoder is. Ironically enough, this can even apply to proprietary game binaries after a long enough time.

Now something like "Game of Thrones" benefits from being available in an industry standard format. It makes for a nice slow moving target in terms of liberated decoders.

How's LibreOffice these days?

[dehole]

Every time I try to use it, I am confronted with the intuitiveness and the additional time spent hunting around menus for the things I want (coming from Office 2003). The last time I checked, their replacement for excel is lacking too...

But by supporting LibreOffice, presumably one could fix those problems, and make the software greater than the competition. Supporting closed source platforms like Microsoft Windows, Office, Gmail, google calander, Exchange, etc... actually prevents decent alternatives from being popular. Microsoft would rather people pirate their software than for them to move to Mac or Linux.

Re:How's LibreOffice these days?

[Green Salad]

I use both Libra and Microsoft. There's a big difference in my ability to interact with the world. I want to use LibreOffice whole hog because the interface is relatively stable from one version to the next, but I've concluded my government actively works to shut down open software and open documents, as it races towards "e-gov."

I loved the pre-ribbon MS-Office interface. (e.g. Office 2003) It had a semi-understandable philosophy of organization, toolbars were stable, easily customized and it took very few clicks to get anything done. However, each interface "improvement" seemed to thumb its nose at fans and anyone "invested" in Microsoft. It meant more clicks and time to do the same thing, in addition to nullification of my muscle-memory caused by the hunting around, it also destroyed any time investment I made in setting up reasonable defaults, like single line spacing between lines and investments in menu customization and pre-programmed footer standardization, such as "server\pathname" and "page y of x" in every footer. With the introduction of the ribbon system in 2007, I tried switching to OpenOffice/Libre Office and liked the more conservative menu system, but am concerned that it, too will try emulate MS look and feel.

With the introduction of a blindingly white, thin texted menu visualization system in Office 2013, I just want to say F.U. and go open-source whole hog, since Microsoft regularly says F.U. to people, like me, that pay them money.

The issue that prevents me from going whole-hog is that various agencies of my government send out mandatory regulatory response documents to businesses using the latest versions of Excel, using Excel's proprietary features (macros) and I must fill in the blanks and respond by a certain date. When I try to raise issue with this, the attitude verges on "How cheap of you to ask for something in a different format. Smart businessmen invest in new software and try not to be a pain to their regulators." Consequently many businesses work downstream with their vendors (often small business) the same way. If my government was truly serious about breaking up a monopolies, it would stop mandating use of specific brands by putting out e-forms that didn't require a particular brand of software. If it insisted it needs to use Excel internally, at least, export to another generally usable format that doesn't require a specific purchase.

We're actively contemplating cyber-security laws requiring that citizens have only secure computers or be subject to fines and/or disconnection. I expect us to make a proprietary mess of that, too.

I actually don't mind monopolies when earned by consumer choice. I just mind monopolistic behavior towards customers who have no reasonable choice, reinforced by government action.

Re:Grammar fail in TFA

[Krishnoid]

Maybe in European languages the connotation is more from 'ware' , usable in the singular (?) sense?

And DFD doesn't care about USA and Canada

[ArcadeMan]

All their documents are only available in A3 and A4 formats.

Even if we wanted to use those formats, it's near impossible to find printers and paper for those formats around here.

Re:Grammar fail in TFA

[kermidge]

The writer's native language appears to be French and the result of the effort to put it into English I considered pretty good. I had no trouble understanding the article.