Thu, 17 Sep 2009 2:36p.m. It is upon us! Horay! After much planning we have managed to secure a great spot to park ourselves, beg, borrow and get sponsorship to pull this off.

Hundreds of people all over New Zealand, and in fact the world have been doing this. Why? Because we are sick of paying out massive amounts of cash to companies for stuff we can get for free that's just as good!

Why would you pay hundreds of dollars for office software when you can download Open Office for free? Why would you want a web browser that doesn't allow you view websites correctly, that takes your entire operating system down when it crashes when you can use FireFox, Chrome, or any of the other brands free?

Most web users are just home bodies who want to touch up a photo, or do a quick spreadsheet, and don't want or need to fork out hundreds of dollars to do so.

Gimp will replace Photoshop for most photo editing work, and there are plenty of other applications and games you can get for free. However this isn't to say that companies can’t make the most of it.

I know that Rachel Goodchild uses Open Office to write all her books, and many schools are now realising and adopting free open source options is far cheaper and smarter.

Often people assume because its free therefore it’s not as good, which is what Software Freedom day is all about.

Groups of people all over the world get together to show you exactly what you can do and what sources. In fact most of them are happy to give you a CD full of it to take home and give it a whirl.

There are often prizes, demos, talks, and all sorts of fun things going on. If you are interested in what’s going on in your area, then check out this page here http://softwarefreedomday.org/teams/oceania/nz/

Don't forget, that these people don't want to sell you anything, they don’t get paid, they are there purely because they believe that you should take a closer look. Most of us even working in the IT industry :)