The first Document Freedom Day (DFD) was organized on March 26, 2008, and included 205 teams around the world who organized multiple events. This year the event will happen on March 25 (next Wednesday). DFD has an important mission which is to raise awareness on the importance of accessible document formats and open standards in everyone’s day to day activities.

It’s good to know that some governments have already realized the importance of this issue and are adopting open formats. Last year, the CONSEGI Declaration was signed by official representatives from many southern countries criticizing ISO’s process surrounding the fast track approval of DIS29500 (choosing Microsoft’s format over the Open Document Format).

Document Freedom Day provides an opportunity to talk about and educate on the importance of document formats standardizing on an open & free specification.