Free software fans around the world are forming local teams that will work together to create events specific to their localities, including educational seminars, product giveaways, and free software demonstrations. “The day is completely free and there will be giveaways, prizes, and further information about how you can do your bit to help ensure technology doesn’t act to lock down our human rights,” says Pia Waugh, the newly elected president of Software Freedom International (SFI), the official support organization for Software Freedom Day. Nine board members from around the world chart the course for current and future Freedom Days, facilitating team requests for organizational help and giveaway items such as T-shirts.

This year, teams and individuals can compete in categories like “Best Event Photo,” “Best SFD Blog Coverage,” and “Best SFD Event.” IBM is giving away five POWER5 servers to the top-winning teams, and individuals will get free Software Freedom Day T-shirts signed by board members.

Matt Oquist, an SFI board member and one of the founders of Software Freedom Day, says that response to this year’s SFD has been good. “In 2004 and 2005 we contacted LUGs via email to encourage them to start SFD teams,” he says, “but this year we just contacted the team leaders from [last year] and we still grew by approximately the same percentage.” Oquist says SFD is so much fun that people are naturally drawn to it. “It really charges up everybody involved. Immediately afterward we always get a bunch of feedback, emails, and pictures. Each successive SFD draws in more people who would’ve been involved the year before if they’d just known about it.”

Waugh says this year there are more than 150 teams so far, with more entries coming in every day. Each team consists of anywhere from two to 30 volunteers. Waugh says each team can reach up to 3,000 people with the message of free software, which is important, she says, because our lives revolve around technology. “This means ultimately our basic human freedoms such as the freedom of association, or the freedom of speech, are only as free as the technology we use to exercise those freedoms.”

For Oquist, SFD is about changing minds. “One important step on the road to Software Freedom is for a majority of the world to recognize the availability and quality of free software. People have been talking for years about the ‘year of Linux on the desktop.’ There are a multitude of factors affecting the delay of Linux desktop adoption, but one of the primary ones seems to be this chicken-and-egg problem. Nobody wants to be first. I’m hoping to see 10 years during which a tidal force sweeps through the world, decimating beyond recovery the degree of the proprietary stranglehold on computing freedom.”

The official deadline for registering teams for SFD has passed, but you are welcome to make a late entry, says Waugh, or simply join a nearby existing team. “Check out the Web site or a team near you, or even start an event yourself. It could be a barbecue, a picnic, an installfest, talks, competitions, whatever you like.” She stresses, “Freedom isn’t just for geeks. Freedom is for everyone.”

The current PC Garage, which began in March at the Asian Americans for Equality Community Technology Center, is scheduled to end this month. Normally, the PC Garage sessions run three months, but this workshop is going so well that the Center decided to extend it for an extra month. Eighteen students between the ages of 14 and 18 gather each week to tinker with computers, watch videos, and discuss articles, while DaSilva and his cohorts at CFSG go to great lengths to find hardware donors, collect the equipment, transport it to the community centers, format disks, update BIOS, and make sure each system is in working order for the eager pupils.

Why go to all that trouble? “It’s information they don’t get from the typical Community Technology Center programs,” DaSilva says. “The kids seem to get a lot out of it. The kids in our workshops not only learn about good software, but they learn how to identify and put together hardware. With free software, there is never any impediment to making the equipment useful.”

DaSilva says it makes him happy when he hears from previous students who are still using the computers they received at PC Garage. “We had two sisters who took our program,” he says, “and one of them recently started coming back to the center. She told me she is taking a Cisco routing class that her high school offers. She said because of our program the hardware stuff she doing is easy, but she is having trouble with the Windows stuff.”

But with all the knowledge participants gain about software and computer systems, DaSilva says the bottom-line benefit of the PC Garage workshops is that “participants learn about technology that respects their freedom.” And the workshops help more than just the young people who attend them. “We’re trying to help out with computer recycling,” he says. “New York City has a lot of equipment that gets discarded as trash by residents or donated by large companies looking to upgrade their facilities.”

Since CFSG depends on donations to make its programs run, DaSilva says the group is always looking for spare computer systems and RAM. But it also takes manpower to keep CFSG going. “Though we occasionally solicit help from acquaintances, we haven’t formally made any public requests for participation,” DaSilva says. “CFSG is looking to build solid infrastructure; if someone volunteers their time and supports our mission we’d consider asking them to join our Board of Directors.”

The CFSG BoD has grown from the original four to a total of six, with assistance from the “non-profit world, like Elizabeth Wilson of AAFE and local businessmen, like Alex Pilosov of Pilosoft Colocation Services,” DaSilva says. “It seems like the idea of helping community service organization offer free software-based programs was just waiting to happen.”

CFSG is putting together a program that will help high school students learn programming concepts, and it currently offers a 3-D animation course using Blender3D. “We’re [also] putting together graphics workshops featuring the GIMP and Inkscape, as well as an audio editing course with Audacity.”

If you’re interested in helping CFSG bring free software to the communities of NYC, write to info@cfsg.org.