Free Software Supporter - Issue 74, May 2014
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
- FSF condemns partnership between Mozilla and Adobe to support Digital Restrictions Management
- Thanks for a great International Day Against DRM
- Tehnoetic wireless USB adapter now FSF-certified to respect your freedom
- Interview with Ciaran Gultnieks of F-Droid
- FSF seeks full-time senior GNU/Linux systems administrator
- Fall 2013 FSF Bulletin now available online
- "Imperfection is not the same as oppression"
- FSF statement on Court of Appeals ruling in Oracle v Google
- Richard Stallman answers questions on Slashdot.org
- FSF joins more than twenty other organizations in plan to "Reset the Net"
- Register now for the 2014 GNU Hackers Meeting
- Open letter to European Commission: stop DRM in HTML5
- Thirty-three Free Software Pact supporters elected to the European Parliament
- Google has most of my email because it has all of yours
- Savannah VCS storage maintenance completed
- LibrePlanet featured resource: GPG guide review
- GNU Spotlight with Karl Berry: 22 new GNU releases!
- GNU Toolchain Update
- Richard Stallman's speaking schedule and other FSF events
- Thank GNUs!
- GNU copyright contributions
- Take action with the FSF!
FSF condemns partnership between Mozilla and Adobe to support Digital Restrictions Management
From May 14th
On May 14, Mozilla announced that it is reluctantly adopting DRM in its Firefox Web browser. In response, Free Software Foundation executive director John Sullivan made a statement condemning the move.
Thanks for a great International Day Against DRM
From May 7th
On May 6, people all over the world spoke out against Digital Restrictions Management with flyering, rallies, teach-ins, and sales on DRM-free media. This post highlights some of the day's actions.
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http://www.defectivebydesign.org/thanks-for-a-great-international-day-against-drm
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http://www.defectivebydesign.org/international-day-against-drm-is-here
Press release:
Tehnoetic wireless USB adapter now FSF-certified to respect your freedom
From May 21st
The FSF has awarded Respects Your Freedom (RYF) certification to the Tehnoetic TET-N150 wireless USB adapter. The RYF certification mark is awarded to products that meet the FSF's standards in regard to users' freedom, control over the product, and privacy.
Interview with Ciaran Gultnieks of F-Droid
From May 8th
In this edition of our Licensing and Compliance Lab's series on free software developers who choose GNU licenses for their works, we conducted an email-based interview with Ciaran Gultnieks, the founder of the F-Droid project and the lead developer of fdroidserver, which is licensed under the GNU AGPL version 3 (or any later version).
FSF seeks full-time senior GNU/Linux systems administrator
From May 2nd
The Free Software Foundation (FSF), a Boston-based 501(c)(3) charity with a worldwide mission to protect freedoms critical to the computer-using public, seeks a full-time senior systems administrator.
Fall 2013 FSF Bulletin now available online
From May 16th
The fall 2013 Free Software Foundation Bulletin, which was mailed to our supporters in November, is now online. Check it out for interesting articles on free software and free software activism.
"Imperfection is not the same as oppression"
From May 30th
In his latest article, Richard Stallman underscores this crucial distinction, and encourages all users whose particular needs are not being met by a free program to address the unmet need in a proactive, respectful, and constructive way.
FSF statement on Court of Appeals ruling in Oracle v Google
From May 27th
The Federal Circuit has ruled in Oracle's favor, which has reintroduced confusion and uncertainty on a user's freedom to use APIs.
Richard Stallman answers questions on Slashdot.org
From May 6th
Richard M. Stallman (RMS) answers questions from Slashdot.org readers and discusses free hardware, deblobbing the kernel, legal reforms, and much more.
FSF joins more than twenty other organizations in plan to "Reset the Net"
From May 5th
We are joining this day of action to protect Internet users from mass surveillance. Stay tuned to learn more about what we'll be doing to Reset the Net on June 5, 2014.
Register now for the 2014 GNU Hackers Meeting
From May 30th
On the weekend of August 15 to 17, 2014 the people responsible for the GNU operating system will gather in Munich, Germany at the eighth GNU Hackers Meeting. The meeting is open to developers, users, and all people interested in GNU. It is an opportunity to share ideas and for social interaction within the GNU community.
Open letter to European Commission: Stop DRM in HTML5
By FSF Europe, from May 6th
On this year's International Day against DRM, FSF Europe sent an open letter to the European Commission, asking the EC to prevent Digital Restrictions Management technology from being closely integrated with the HTML5 standard.
Thirty-three Free Software Pact supporters elected to the European Parliament
By April and FSF Europe, from May 28th
The European elections have brought thirty-three free software supporters into the new European Parliament. Candidates across the political spectrum signed the Free Software Pact, promising to support free software and free standards during their time in Parliament.
Google has most of my email because it has all of yours
By Benjamin Mako Hill, from May 11th
FSF board member Benjamin Mako Hill writes on the privacy implications of Gmail, even if you don't personally use it.
Savannah VCS storage maintenance completed
By Bob Proulx, from May 14th
Storage migration on Savannah has been completed. As a result, the vcs has returned to normal service and users can now enjoy a faster storage system.
Join the FSF and friends in updating the Free Software Directory
From May 30th
Tens of thousands of people visit directory.fsf.org each month to discover free software. Each entry in the Directory contains a wealth of useful information, from basic category and descriptions to version control, IRC channels, documentation, and licensing. The Free Software Directory has been a great resource to software users over the past decade, but it needs your help staying up-to-date with new and exciting free software projects.
To help, join our weekly IRC meetings on Fridays. Meetings take place in the #fsf channel on irc.gnu.org, and usually include a handful of regulars as well as newcomers. Everyone's welcome.
The next meeting is Friday, June 6 from 2pm to 5pm EDT (18:00 to 21:00 UTC). Details here:
After this meeting, you can check https://www.fsf.org/events to see the rest of June's weekly meetings as they are scheduled.
LibrePlanet featured resource: GPG guide review
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 the review page for our GPG guide, which helps people go through the process of installing email encryption software. You are invited to try out and provide feedback for our guide.
Do you have a suggestion for next month's featured resource? Let us know at campaigns@fsf.org.
GNU Spotlight with Karl Berry: 22 new GNU releases!
22 new GNU releases in the last month (as of May 26, 2014):
- anubis-4.2
- autogen-5.18.3
- ccaudio2-2.1.3
- ccscript-5.0.2
- cim-5.1
- easejs-0.2.2
- freeipmi-1.4.3
- gcc-4.8.3
- gdb-7.7.1
- gnun-0.9
- grep-2.19
- guile-opengl-0.1.0
- guile-rpc-0.4
- libmicrohttpsd-0.9.36
- libtasn1-3.6
- mcron-1.0.8
- mit-scheme-9.2
- moe-1.6
- parallel-20140522
- sipwitch-1.9.1
- ucommon-6.1.5
- xnee-3.19
To get announcements of most new GNU releases, subscribe to the info-gnu mailing list: https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/info-gnu. Nearly all GNU software is available from https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/, or preferably one of its mirrors (https://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, we welcome: Mohammed Isam Mohammed, author and maintainer of the new package GnuDOS. Edscott Wilson, author and maintainer of the new GNU package libdb. Vaibhaw Pandey, new maintainer of GNU groff. Sebastien Diaz, new maintainer of gnukart, along with his work on many other GNU packages. * Amadeusz Slawinski, new co-maintainer of GNU screen. Thanks to all.
A number of GNU packages, as well as the GNU operating system as a whole, are looking for maintainers and other assistance: please see https://www.gnu.org/server/takeaction.html#unmaint if you'd like to help. The general page on how to help GNU is at https://www.gnu.org/help/help.html. To submit new packages to the GNU operating system, see https://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.
GNU Toolchain update
From May 18th
The GNU toolchain refers to the part of the GNU system which is used for building programs. These components of GNU are together often on other systems and for compiling programs for other platforms.
This month features improvements to GDB, GCC, and GNU binutils.
Richard Stallman's speaking schedule
For event details, as well as to sign-up to be notified for future events in your area, please visit https://www.fsf.org/events.
So far, Richard Stallman has the following events in June:
- June 02, 2014, 10:00 AM to 12:00 PM, Chisinau, Moldova, "Free software in ethics and in practice"
- June 03, 2014, 03:00 PM to 05:00 PM, Rm. Valcea, Romania, "A free digital society"
- June 06, 2014, 10:00 PM to 12:00 PM, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, "Copyright vs. community"
- June 07, 2014, 09:30 AM to 11:30 AM, Bucharest, Romania, "A free digital society"
Other FSF and free software events
- May 31, 2014, 09:30 AM to 10:00 AM, Boston, Massachusetts, "An introduction to free software"
- June 08, 2014, 11:00 AM to 12:15 PM, Boston, Massachusetts, "Zak Rogoff to speak at Commonbound"
Thank GNUs!
We appreciate everyone who donates to the Free Software Foundation, but we'd like to give special recognition to the folks who have donated $500 or more in the last month.
This month, a big Thank GNU to:
- pall.as Internetwork GmbH
- Dr. Luis Fajardo López
- Arild Lund
- Jack Lawson
You can add your name to this list by donating at https://donate.fsf.org.
GNU copyright contributions
Assigning your copyright to the Free Software Foundation helps us defend the GPL and keep software free. The following individuals have assigned their copyright to the FSF in the past month:
- Volker Schroer (GNU Radio)
- Christian Svensson (glibc)
- Kevin Cox (glibc)
- Ian Kelling (Emacs)
- Raul Schmidlin (glibc)
- Julius Baxter (GNU Binutils)
- Steffen Nurpmeso (GNU Troff)
- Mike Gerwitz (GNU ease.js)
Want to see your name on this list? Contribute to GNU and assign your copyright to the FSF.
https://www.gnu.org/server/takeaction.html#dev
Take action with the FSF
Contributions from thousands of individual members enable the FSF's work. You can contribute by joining at https://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! https://www.fsf.org/jf?referrer=2442
The FSF is also always looking for volunteers (https://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 (https://www.fsf.org/campaigns) and take action on software patents, DRM, free software adoption, OpenDocument, RIAA and more.
Copyright © 2014 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/.