Free Software Supporter - Issue 87, July 2015
Save the date: FSF30, our 30th anniversary celebration, Saturday, October 3
The Free Software Foundation celebrates 30 years this fall, with a party and other events in Boston and around the world! Mark your calendars and bookmark fsf.org/fsf30, where we'll share our celebratory plans -- and invite you to make your own.
The FSF is hiring: web developer, outreach & communications coordinator, deputy director
We are looking for a full-time, Boston-based web developer to hack on free software with us as we get ready for our 30th anniversary celebrations in October.
We'd also like to add a new Boston-based role on our leadership team. Help shape the FSF's next thirty years!
Our outreach and communications coordinator, Georgia Young, has taken on a new role within the campaigns team: program manager. We're looking for a detail-oriented, Boston-based free software enthusiast to fill her shoes.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- May 2015: RMS in Brest, Athens, Heraklion, and Chania
- The many-headed monster of international trade agreements: TPP, TTIP, TISA, and CETA
- Introducing Adam Leibson: summer campaigns intern
- Historical Permission Notice and Disclaimer added to license list
- One year of encryption with the Email Self-Defense guide
- MediaGoblin 0.8.0: A gallery of fine creatures
- Introducing Stephen Mahood, system administrator
- Meet the DRM drones: help us shame these anti-freedom lobbyists
- Recommendations from the National Council on Digital Technology should be ratified in the digital bill
- Free software perspectives on the EU Parliament's adoption of the Reda Report
- French state IT looks to take example from free software
- TiSA: the trade agreement that would prohibit free software mandates
- LibrePlanet featured resource: Incomplete pages
- Two GCC releases in June
- GNU Spotlight with Brandon Invergo: 26 new GNU releases!
- GNU Toolchain Update
- Richard Stallman's speaking schedule and other FSF events
- Thank GNUs!
- Take action with the FSF!
- GNU copyright contributions
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May 2015: RMS in Brest, Athens, Heraklion, and Chania
From June 29th
In May 2015, RMS traveled to and spoke at the Université de Bretagne Occidentale in Brest, France and to Greece, where he spoke at Commons Fest in Athens, at the Natural History Museum of Crete, in Heraklion, and at the Technical University of Crete, in Chania. Here are some photos from his travels.
The many-headed monster of international trade agreements: TPP, TTIP, TISA, and CETA
From June 23rd
While the threat of TPP draws ever closer, there are other trade agreements on the horizon that will prove equally malicious to user freedom. You can still make a difference by fighting back.
Introducing Adam Leibson: summer campaigns intern
From June 22nd
Hello free software supporters, my name is Adam Tobias Leibson. I've been an avid GNU/Linux user since my first year of high school. Around that time, I read Cory Doctorow's book Little Brother. That book challenged me to think more deeply about the effects of mass surveillance on society, and brought about my interests in privacy and cryptography.
Historical Permission Notice and Disclaimer added to license list
From June 8th
We recently updated our list of various licenses and comments about them to include the Historical Permission Notice and Disclaimer(HPND). The HPND is a simple permissive license, compatible with all versions of the GPL.
One year of encryption with the Email Self-Defense guide
From June 5th
Two years ago, Edward Snowden tipped the first domino in a chain that led to a historic international conversation about the role of surveillance in modern life. One year ago, we launched Email Self-Defense, an infographic and guide to encrypting your email with free software to protect your privacy and resist bulk surveillance. Since then, Email Self-Defense has been translated into ten languages. If you've been putting off setting up encryption, or know someone who might like your help setting it up, this anniversary is a great occasion to do it!
MediaGoblin 0.8.0: A Gallery of Fine Creatures
From June 4th
We’re excited to announce that MediaGoblin 0.8.0, “A Gallery of Fine Creatures”, has been released! The biggest news is that the client to server API (making use of the future federation API) is much improved! That means that users no longer have to depend on a browser to access MediaGoblin. You can access and post to your MediaGoblin instance via any of several Pump.io compatible clients, like Pumpa and Dianara (or write your own using PyPump)!
Introducing Stephen Mahood, system administrator
From June 3rd
System administrator Stephen Mahood (marxistvegan on IRC) talks about how he got interested in free software and what he was doing before he joined the staff of the Free Software Foundation.
Meet the DRM drones: help us shame these anti-freedom lobbyists
From June 2nd
These DRM offenders tried to squelch anti-circumvention exemptions; let them know that DRM is always wrong.
Recommendations from the National Council on Digital Technology should be ratified in the digital bill
From April, June 26th
On June 18th, 2015, the French government revealed its digital strategy. On this occasion, the Conseil National du Numérique (National Digital Council) also submitted its report "Digital Ambition". The latter presents, among its proposals, the recommendation of giving priority to free software in public procurement, a priority that April encourages the government to write into the future bill.
Free software perspectives on the EU Parliament's adoption of the Reda Report
In June, the European Union Parliament's legal affairs committee adopted a copyright reform proposal put forth by Parliament member Julia Reda, of the German Pirate Party. The report's recommendations included making copyright exceptions (similar to "fair use" in the U.S.) uniform across all EU member states, shortening the term of copyright, and several measures that resist digital restrictions management -- but some of these recommendations were struck, including the call for EU-wide copyright exceptions. Here, we share the perspectives of April and FSFE.
From April, June 16th
From FSFE, June 16th
French state IT looks to take example from free software
By April, June 3rd
Jacques Marzin, Director of DISIC (the French interministerial directorate for information systems and communication), wishes to strengthen and extend the public services' strategy with respect to free software. April welcomes this and encourages the government to give DISIC the means necessary to implement this strategy.
TiSA: the trade agreement that would prohibit free software mandates
By April, June 3rd
On May 27, 2015 a a new leak of TiSA (Trade in Services Agreement) was published. TiSA is an international agreement currently negotiated behind closed doors by 50 countries, including the EU and the US. In this version, an article explicitly prevents a country to give priority to free software. April denounces this text and asks European governments to reject those dangerous and opaque negotiations.
Join the FSF and friends in updating the Free Software Directory
From June 24th
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, July 10th from 2pm to 5pm EDT (19:00 to 22:00 UTC). Details here:
After this meeting, you can check https://www.fsf.org/events to see the rest of this month's weekly meetings as they are scheduled.
LibrePlanet featured resource: Incomplete pages
Every month on LibrePlanet, we highlight one resource that is interesting and useful -- and this month, it's one that could use your help.
For July, we are highlighting Incomplete_pages, which collects all incomplete pages on LibrePlanet. At the moment, there are many region-specific user group pages that contain no information. You are invited to help improve this important resource.
Do you have a suggestion for next month's featured resource? Let us know at campaigns@fsf.org.
Two GCC releases in June
The GNU Project and the GCC developers have released GCC 4.8.5 and GCC 4.9.3. These releases are both bug-fix releases, containing fixes for regressions in GCC 4.8.4 and 4.9.2, respectively, relative to previous releases of GCC.
From June 26th
From June 23rd
GNU Spotlight with Brandon Invergo: 26 new GNU releases!
26 new GNU releases in the last month (as of June 24, 2015):
- datamash-1.0.7
- easejs-0.2.5
- electric-9.06
- fisicalab-0.3.5
- freeipmi-1.4.9
- gcal-4
- gcc-4.8.5
- global-6.5
- gnu-c-manual-0.2.4
- gnupg-2.1.5
- gnu-pw-mgr-1.4
- gxmessage-3.4.3
- help2man-1.47.1
- icecat-31.7.0-gnu1
- inetutils-1.9.4
- librejs-6.0.9
- linux-libre-4.1-gnu
- mediagoblin-0.8.0
- mpfr-3.1.3
- octave-4.0.0
- parallel-20150622
- pspp-0.8.5
- screen-4.3.0
- sharutils-4.15.2
- sipwitch-1.9.8
- ucommon-6.3.4
For announcements of most new GNU releases, subscribe to the info-gnu mailing list: https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/info-gnu.
To download: nearly all GNU software is available from https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/, or preferably one of its mirrors from https://www.gnu.org/prep/ftp.html. You can use the url https://ftpmirror.gnu.org/ to be automatically redirected to a (hopefully) nearby and up-to-date mirror.
This month, we welcome Thien-Thi Nguyen as the new maintainer of GNU Superopt.
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.
If you have a working or partly working program that you'd like to offer to the GNU project as a GNU package, see https://www.gnu.org/help/evaluation.html.
As always, please feel free to write to us at maintainers@gnu.org with any GNUish questions or suggestions for future installments.
GNU Toolchain update
From June 22nd
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.
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 this month:
- July 4, 2015, 10:40-11:40 AM, London, United Kingdom, TBD
- July 5, 2015, 2:30-4:30 PM, Beauvais, France, "Une société numérique libre"
- July 6, 2015, 2:00-5:00 PM, Paris, France, "The free software movement and the GNU GPL"
- July 7, 2015, 4:00-6:00 PM, Beauvais, France, Panel, topic TBD
- July 8, 2015, 7:00-9:30 PM, Frankfurt, Germany, "Free software and your freedom"
- July 9, 2015, 6:00-9:00 PM, Frankfurt, Germany, "Copyright vs. community"
- July 10, 2015, 4:00-6:30 PM, Karlsruhe, Germany, "A free digital society"
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:
- Justin Baugh
- Cătălin Frâncu
- David Hampton
- Preston Maness
- David Morris
- Shawn the R0ck
- Hayley Violett
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:
- Alain Schneble (Emacs)
- Erik Krisztian Varga (GCC)
- Rupert Swarbrick (Emacs)
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://my.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://my.fsf.org/join
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 © 2015 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.