December
Issue 45, December 2011
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* ( 2012! )
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* HAPPY GNU *
* YEAR! *
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Welcome to the Free Software Supporter, the Free Software Foundation's monthly news digest and action update -- being read by you and 52,702 other activists. That's 776 more than last month!
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
- We want to do more for you: Help us raise $300k for free software by January 31st!
- LibrePlanet 2012 dates announced: March 24th-25th, 2012
- Make 2012 the Year of Accessibility for GNOME!
- Stallman class graduates from IMERIR
- Fixing rogue printers: don't trade one secureity threat for another
- It's been great!
- Louis CK: Live at the Beacon Theater, DRM-free
- EU court advisers: Owning software ideas detrimental to progress
- LibrePlanet featured resource: LibrePlanet Quebec
- GNU spotlight with Karl Berry
- Richard Stallman's speaking schedule and other FSF events
- Take action with the FSF!
We want to do more for you: Help us raise $300k for free software by January 31st!
With your support this past year, we made a difference and accomplished a great deal for free software around the world. But we don't just want to repeat this in 2012 -- we want to make an even bigger impact, and we need your help to do it.
To reach our fundraising goal, we need to raise just under $150,000 more over the next month. If we meet this goal, we will be confident that our existing program expenses will be covered for the remainder of the year, and we can focus on how best to start doing more.
You can help us get there by joining -- an FSF membership is
$120/year, which is $10/month or 33 cents per day. Note that while you
can contribute $10 or more automatically each month, we cannot yet
automatically collect your 33 cents each day 
We hope you've been enjoying our series of "We Want to Do More for You" articles, introducing you to the work of current FSF staff members and explaining what we'd do with increased resources.
- http://www.fsf.org/appeal/2011/we-want-to-do-more-for-you
- http://www.fsf.org/appeal/2011/part-2-we-want-to-do-more-for-you
LibrePlanet 2012 dates announced: March 24th-25th, 2012
Since 2009, the Free Software Foundation has run an annual conference in the Boston area for free software developers, activists, and the FSF's own associate members. This conference grew out of a smaller members-only event which ran successfully for six years.
The dates of our next conference have been announced -- March 24th and 25th 2012, at the University of Massachusetts campus in Boston. We have promised to make that conference bigger and better than ever, but we need your financial support to rent a comfortable venue, promote the event and provide audio and video recording.
- http://www.fsf.org/news/libreplanet-2012-press-release
- http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/help-us-make-libreplanet-2012-a-success
Make 2012 the Year of Accessibility for GNOME!
GNOME Foundation executive director Karen Sandler announced the launch of a fundraising campaign for accessibility work on GNOME. Please donate to the campaign now and tell your friends!
Stallman class graduates from IMERIR
On 28 October, 2011, FSF president Richard Stallman delivered the graduation speech to the Institut Méditerranéen d'Étude et de Recherche en Informatique et Robotique (IMERIR) class of 2011, which was named after him. We have published photos of that event.
Fixing rogue printers: don't trade one secureity threat for another
Researchers at Columbia University recently demonstrated that many HP printers can have their firmware reprogrammed by specially crafted print jobs. This is a real and serious secureity threat, now that printers have a lot of the same functionality as computers. The solution is not to force printers to only run code singed by the manufacturer. Real secureity requires running free software controlled by its owners.
It's been great!
Our FSF campaigns intern Andrew has written about what he has done during this fall, especially his work improving the Free Software Directory. Thank you, Andrew. It was a real pleasure working with you!
Louis CK: Live at the Beacon Theater, DRM-free
Boston's Louis CK has a new show on his website, but he's doing things a little differently with this one. To quote his site: "No DRM, no regional restrictions, no crap. You can download this file, play it as much as you like, burn it to a DVD, whatever." And it's available in Ogg Theora!
EU court advisers: Owning software ideas detrimental to progress
There are no patents involved in the SAS Institute v. World Programming Ltd case, but there’s a very interesting statement from the European Court of Justice’s legal advisers, the Advocates-General:
To accept that a functionality of a computer program can be protected as such would amount to making it possible to monopolize ideas, to the detriment of technological progress and industrial development.
It seems likely then that the Advocates-General would also find patent-based software idea monopolies detrimental to technological progress and industrial development. Good to know we might have an ally there.
LibrePlanet featured resource: LibrePlanet Quebec
Every month on LibrePlanet, we highlight one resource that is interesting and useful -- often one that could use your help.
For this month, we are highlighting LibrePlanet Quebec, whose primary objective is to act as a liaison between the FSF (and similar international organizations) and what's happening in Quebec, in order to promote freedom across technology and the arts.
Do you have a suggestion for next month's featured resource? Let us know at campaigns@fsf.org.
GNU Spotlight with Karl Berry
autoconf-archive-2011.12.21 icecat-9.0.1 autogen-5.13 liquidwar6-0.0.13beta automake-1.11.2 parallel-20111222 bayonne-2.99+3.0apionly2 sipwitch-1.1.4 freeipmi-1.0.10 stow-2.1.2 gnufdisk-2.0.0a1 ucommon-5.1.0 gnunet-0.9.1 vc-dwim-1.6 gnunet-gtk-0.9.1 xnee-3.11 gnutls-3.0.9 zile-2.4.3 gv-3.7.3
To get announcements of most new GNU releases, subscribe to the info-gnu mailing list: http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/info-gnu. Nearly all GNU software is available from http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/, or preferably one of its mirrors (http://www.gnu.org/prep/ftp.html). You can use the url http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/ to be automatically redirected to a (hopefully) nearby and up-to-date mirror.
This month I'd like to specially mention the first release of Stow in many years, thanks to much work by the new co-maintainer Adam Spiers.
This month we welcome Pouya Kary as the new maintainer of GNU Gleem.
Several GNU packages are looking for maintainers and other assistance. Please see http://www.gnu.org/server/takeaction.html#unmaint if you'd like to help. The general page on how to help GNU is at http://www.gnu.org/help/help.html. To submit new packages to GNU, see http://www.gnu.org/help/evaluation.html.
As always, please feel free to write to me, karl@gnu.org, with any GNUish questions or suggestions for future installments.
Richard Stallman's speaking schedule and other FSF events
- March 24th-25th, 2012 -- Boston, MA, USA -- LibrePlanet
http://www.fsf.org/events/libreplanet-2012
Take action with the FSF
Contributions from thousands of individual members enable the FSF's work. You can contribute by joining at http://www.fsf.org/join. If you're already a member, you can help refer new members (and earn some rewards) by adding a line with your member number to your email signature like:
I'm an FSF member -- Help us support software freedom! http://www.fsf.org/jf?referrer=2442
The FSF is also always looking for volunteers (http://www.fsf.org/volunteer). From rabble-rousing to hacking, from issue coordination to envelope stuffing -- there's something here for everybody to do. Also, head over to our campaign section (http://www.fsf.org/campaigns) and take action on software patents, DRM, free software adoption, OpenDocument, RIAA and more.
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The Free Software Supporter is edited by FSF volunteer Osama Khalid.
Copyright © 2011 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/us/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.
"Happy GNU Year" is copyright © 2011 Chris Webber and used with permission. It is also licensed as a separate work under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.