"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" Thank you message by Dario
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 ❤️.
Clockwise,
picture of Ada & Zangemann postcard" (CC-BY Marta), picture of
'I Love Free Software Day' celebration by FSFE local group Zurich (CC-BY-SA 4.0 FSFE-local-group-Zurich), picture of FSFE staffers playing SuperTuxKart together (CC-BY Matthias Kirschner),
Sharepicture of Ana Galan with 'Thank you' message ( CC BY 4.0 Lisa Schmidt)"
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.
"'I Love Free Software Day' celebration by Tiranë, Albania, CC BY-NC-SA-LibreLabs"
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.
"'I Love Free Software Day' celebration by Poznań, Poland, CC0"
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.
"'I Love Free Software Day' celebration by BGLug, Bergamo, Biblioteca Tiraboschi CC-BY Marta"
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.
"'I Love Free Software Day' celebration Barcelona, Spain, CC-BY Albert Astals Cid"
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.
"'I Love Free Software Day' celebration by FSFE local group Zurich CC-BY-SA 4.0 FSFE-local-group-Zurich"
"'I Love Free Software Day' celebration by FSFE Netherlands CC0"
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'.
"@Musiqueando singing for the 'I Love Free Software Day'"
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.
Brewster Kahle, founder of the Inter archive, and Matthias Kirschner, President of the Free Software Foundation Europe, CC-BY Beatrice Murch
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.
"I Love Free Software Day" Thank you message by Matthias to Vim editor, CC-BY-SA 4.0 NOI
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 ❤️ ❤️ ❤️
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