Document Freedom Day from Brussels to Taiwan: Open Standards celebrated in 30 countries
In 30 countries around the world, activists are celebrating Open Standards on today's Document Freedom Day, an annual campaign to promote Open Standards. More than 50 groups are hosting events around the world, from Brussels to Nicaragua to Nepal.
Open Standards are crucial to ensure that different computer systems can work together, and that users can access documents regardless of the computing platform or device they use. They are the foundation of the Internet and the World Wide Web.
"Markets for digital products such as audiobooks and cloud documents have grown dramatically. Open Standards let users break free from vendor lock-in and corporate control," said Sam Tuke, Campaign Manager at the Free Software Foundation Europe.
This year the campaign focuses on web-streaming technologies. "In 2012 trail-blazing Open Standards advocates introduced thousands of people to better standards" said Erik Albers, Community Manager. "This time, we are encouraging people to switch to HTML5 technologies".
The campaign calls on websites to replace Flash with Open Standards-based HTML5 technologies. Activists are reporting Flash-dependent web pages and donating to educational packs including blacked-out "Flash Player required" glasses, illustrating the exclusive and inaccessible nature of closed formats for media streaming.
Document Freedom Day 2013 is facilitated by the Free Software Foundation Europe, and supported by campaign sponsors Google and openSUSE.