Participants celebrating Software Freedom in its totality
Software Freedom Day (SFD) was established in 2004 and was first observed on August 28, 2004 when over 70 teams participated.
Since that time it has grown in popularity as more than 300 teams from over 60 countries celebrated the second SFD, held on September 10, 2005. The primary sponsor for 2010 was Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu Linux. From 2006 onwards, it has been decided the Software Freedom Day is to be held on the third Saturday of every September: The 2010 event takes place on September 18 and will be celebrated in 65 countries across the globe.
SFD will be celebrated in Lagos this year at the Center for Information Technology and Systems (CITS), University of Lagos Akoka. SFD stems from the pioneering activities of the Free Software Foundation (FSF); a non-profit company founded by an American, Richard Stallman in 1985 to support the free software movement that promotes the universal freedom to distribute and modify computer software without restriction. The laws governing the development, use and distribution of software programs developed for the free software movement is often referred to as ‘copyleft’ which is the direct opposite of ‘copyright’; these laws are packaged as General Public Licence or GPL
If you are new to open source, Software Freedom Day celebrates a philosophical movement which values collaboration, community and transparency. It benefits the public good and ensures basic human freedoms are strengthened by technology. To learn more, attend the SFD celebrations to be held at University of Lagos this year 2011. Students from the university and other institutions, will be participating in the event.
