"I Love Free Software Day" 2025: Hidden Projects
In the week of the 14th of February we celebrated the I Love Free Software Day 2025. This year we marked this special day with 19 events in 11 different European countries. Even more, hundreds of people and many organisations joined us in the Fediverse. With a special "Thank you!" note for Free Software projects and contributors. To all who joined us this time: "Thank you" for participating in this 15th edition of the "I Love Free Software Day" ❤️❤️❤️!
In 2025 the FSFE and its local groups focused on hidden Free Software projects for the "I Love Free Software Day". Together with our local groups we wanted to raise awareness of all the hidden Free Software Projects that power our daily infrastructure. Free Software is everywhere and often it is the small projects that become a vital part of our lives - therefore we dedicated this "I Love Free Software Day" to all those projects that are not that prominent, so to shed some light on them ❤️
I Love Free Software Day celebrations 2025
For this year the FSFE's local groups planned several events across Europe. There was a great variety of activities at the different events, also depending on the size of the gathering - there were events from around 10 people to nearly 200 people.
To help the FSFE's local groups with organising all the different events we created a toolkit. The toolkit includes hands on tips and tricks for organising and sharing your event, some presentations on Free Software and the 'I Love Free Software Day' as well as fun games to fill the evening. The kit was a great resource for the organisers to use the available material or to take it as an inspiration for their own material. With this preparation our local groups could get started with organising all the amazing events across Europe ❤️.
New events and new local groups
Tiranë, Albania
For the first time "I Love Free Software Day 2025" was organised in Albania. This event kicked off with several presentations about different Free Software projects and ended with some snacks and drinks. It was a cosy get-together and a great start of 'I Love Free Software Day' celebrations in Albania.
Poland - a local movement started
For several years our local group in Poland has not been active. But as the turn of 2025 approached, this changed. No fewer than three new local groups began celebrating ‘I Love Free Software Day’ in several Polish cities. Those celebrations and gatherings are the foundation of the new activity in the Polish local groups.
Nuremberg celebrations
Among our newest event locations also the FSFE people in Nuremberg started to plan a get together. Nuremberg has very strong Free and Open Source businesses. While SUSE was originally founded in the neighboring city of Fürth, there are now several other Free Software companies based in Nuremberg. Together the local FSFE people, NETWAYs, SUSE, openSUSE, the Geeko Foundation, OpenCloud and the useful check_systemd tool organised a great meeting. During the meeting all the local projects shared their ideas in different talks and it was a great chance to start networking with each other about Free Software. The celebrations were a great way to get in contact with each other and to form new alliances.
Italy and the local Linux User Groups
In 2024 we had a great event in the Italian town Bergamo, which was organised by the FSFE together with the local Linux user group, BGlug. For 2025 we had a re-launch of this event and also several new events across the country. From Bozen-Bolzano to Este, and including one event in Sicilia, which was attended by 180 students. All of those events were possible by the great support of the local Linux User groups and the local FSFE groups.
Luxembourg Ville
For the first time there was a local celebration in Luxembourg with Free Software enthusiasts. They shared some knowledge about Free Software, the 'I Love Free Software Day' and many more interesting topics. Through out the celebrations people connected and fortified their local Free Software movement.
Next, to all our new events also several ones from the previous years were relaunched and it was a great pleasure to see the people again gathering in Potteries (UK), Nijmegen (Netherlands), Zurich (CH), Barcelona and Madrid in Spain, and the German local groups in Frankfurt and Berlin.
Reaching out to the people behind Free Software: Thank you
Again, even though hundreds more non-Free Software enthusiasts have joined the Fediverse in recent years, the #ilovefs made it to the top most used hashtags on the 14th of February. For this, we want to say 'Thank you'! Thank you to all of you who shared their appreciation for Free Software and their gratitude to all free software contributors. There where a lot of great ways that people, projects and organisations took up to share their 'I Love Free Software Day' message in the Fediverse, highlighting some of the infrastructure Free Software projects, like the Internet archive. Even more, this year there were some several creative ways to share the love for Free Software. Take a look at this amazing song done by Musiqueando for the 'I Love Free Software Day: 2025'.
For the first time the German based Chaos Computer Club took part in the celebrations and shared a post (DE only) by Bonnie Mehring and Constanze Kurz on their famous CCC webpage. This lent a great visibility to the local groups celebrations. It is amazing to see how much this collaboration highlighted the importance of the day while reaching out to new people.
Additionally, for this ‘I Love Free Software Day’ Matthias Kirschner shared a notable recognition of Bram Moolenaar, creator of the Vim text editor. Vim, is a widely recognised and esteemed editor, which is used on countless systems. The work of Bram Moolenaar has played a crucial role in the software freedom movement. Following his passing in 2023, the continued development of Vim by the community ensures that his legacy remains influential – Thank you to all contributors.
Software Freedom Podcast episode with Marc Prud'hommeaux
Of course also for the 2025 celebrations the FSFE recorded a new Software Freedom Podcast episode. For our 30th episode Bonnie Mehring sat down with Marc Prud'hommeaux and discussed the The App Fair Project. Together at FOSDEM they searched and found a quite area to sit down and have a chat about the project, the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and how to further level the playing field for Free Software. Take a few moments and listen to our Software Freedom Podcast episode.
Thank you for joining this year's “I Love Free Software” celebrations ❤️ ❤️ ❤️