Free Software Supporter Issue 58, January 2013
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- RIP Aaron Swartz
- Interview with Matthieu Aubry of Piwik
- Popular self-publishing and book printing company, Lulu, drops DRM
- What can we ask of the USPTO?
- Where in the world is RMS? community contest
- GNU Press releases new edition of the Emacs manual!
- Don't miss our daily highlights on fsf.org!
- GNU Press now selling GNU/Linux Inside stickers!
- Help us sign up 71 new members by January 31st, and use your new Jabber account
- May/June 2012: In Florianopolis and at Porto Alegre's Palácio Piratini
- LibrePlanet featured resource: Promote Free Software
- GNU Spotlight with Karl Berry: 27 new GNU releases!
- Richard Stallman's speaking schedule and other FSF events
- Thank GNUs!
- Take action with the FSF!
RIP Aaron Swartz
From January 11th
On January 11th, Aaron Swartz, a social justice advocate, free software author, and friend of the FSF, committed suicide. His loss has been deeply felt by many.
- Lawrence Lessig on Aaron Swartz's death: http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/
40347463044/prosecutor-as- bully - Remembrance site: http://www.rememberaaronsw.com
Interview with Matthieu Aubry of Piwik
From January 22nd
This is the latest installment of our Licensing and Compliance Lab's series on free software developers who choose GNU licenses for their works. In this installment, I interviewed (via email) Matthieu Aubry, the creator of Piwik, a freely licensed web analytics package. The FSF encourages people to use Piwik as a replacement for Google Analytics, since Google Analytics requires nonfree JavaScript to run in visitors' browsers, and to be careful with Piwik's privacy settings to make sure that visitor IP addresses and other identifiable bits of information are not recorded.
Popular self-publishing and book printing company, Lulu, drops DRM
From January 22nd
Online self-publishing platforms have lowered barriers for authors to get their works published, giving rise to a new kind of literature that works without big publishers. Lulu is one of the most popular solutions for writers to easily sell their works in print or as ebooks. A few years ago, they defended their DRM-encumbered ebooks, but they have just announced that they are saying goodbye to DRM.
What can we ask of the USPTO?
From January 23rd
The USPTO is organising roundtables to get suggestions from software developers. The FSF has requested to participate.
Where in the world is RMS? community contest
RMS and his laptops are inseparable, and they've been around the world together. In January we challenged our members to identify where RMS and his laptop are in this picture.
The first to answer correctly received a free software tshirt.
GNU Press releases new edition of the Emacs manual!
From January 3rd
GNU Emacs manuals are back, now in the updated seventeenth edition for version 24.2, complete with a matching Emacs reference card. Enjoy learning to program (or write poetry!) with Emacs while sipping a hot coffee in our Emacs reference mugs.
Don't miss our daily highlights on fsf.org!
From January 3rd
When you visit http://www.fsf.org now through the end of January (and maybe beyond!), you'll notice something different about our home page. It's our new “daily highlight,” a little tidbit of free software history, wisdom, art, and even goodies like shop.fsf.org coupons for you to enjoy.
GNU Press now selling GNU/Linux Inside stickers!
From January 18th
By popular demand, we are now selling the GNU/Linux Inside sticker pack. For $15, you receive 10 GNU/Linux stickers. Because these stickers are high-quality and durable, they won't fade away or scratch off your computer, making it the ideal way to rep your use of free software!
Help us sign up 71 new members by January 31st, and use your new Jabber account
From January 29th
We've launched an XMPP (Jabber) server for FSF members to use. If you're not already a member, join today and help us reach our “stretch” goal of 71 new members by January 31st.
May/June 2012: In Florianopolis and at Porto Alegre's Palácio Piratini
From January 28th
RMS was at the “II Fórum Mundial de Educação Profissional e Tenológica: Democratização, Emancipaçao e Sustentabilidade” in Florianopolis, to deliver his speech “Free Software and Your Freedom,” on May 30th, and, on the 31st, to speak on the “The Free Software Movement: Appropriation, Designing and Use” panel, in front of about 500 students, professors, researchers, government workers, and union members. His message was simple: “For ethical education, the software used must be livre, and the teaching materials must be livre too.”
Join the FSF and friends in updating the Free Software Directory
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 from 2:00pm to 5pm EDT (19:00 to 22:00 UTC) . 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.
LibrePlanet featured resource: Promote Free Software
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 Promote Free Software, which provides information about working together to raise the profile of free software. You are invited to adopt, spread and improve this important resource.
Do you have a suggestion for next month's featured resource? Let us know at campaigns@fsf.org.
GNU Spotlight with Karl Berry: 27 new GNU releases!
27 new GNU releases this month (as of January 24, 2012):
autogen-5.17.1
gnunet-0.9.5
mtools-4.0.18
automake-1.13.1
groff-1.22.1
nettle-2.6
cgicc-3.2.10
gsrc-2013.01.06
parallel-20130122
freeipmi-1.2.4
help2man-1.41.1
pycdio-0.18
gawk-4.0.2
libcdio-paranoia-10.2+0.90
pyconfigure-0.1.1
gettext-0.18.2
libmicrohttpd-0.9.24
remotecontrol-1.0
glibc-2.17
libopts-37.0.12
sharutils-4.13.3
gnu-ghostscript-9.06.0
mifluz-0.25.0
sipwitch-1.5.0 gnun-0.7
motti-3.0.1
solfege-3.20.8
To get announcements of most new GNU releases, subscribe to the info-gnu mailing list: http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/
We welcome Lucas Bonnet as a new co-maintainer of GNU EMMS, Stephen Dawson as the maintainer of the new package remotecontrol (first release already made), Holger Hans Peter Freyther as the new maintainer of GNU Smalltalk, Shaunak Shaha as the new maintainer of GNU DDD, and Jose Marchesi as the new maintainer of GNU sed (in addition to the many things he already does).
A number of GNU packages, as well as the GNU operating system as a whole, are looking for maintainers and other assistance. Please see http://www.gnu.org/server/
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
For event details, as well as to sign-up to be notified for future events in your area, please visit .
So far, Richard Stallman has the following events in February and March:
- February 04, 2013, 07:00 PM, Dublin, Ireland, The free software movement”
- March 15, 2013, 05:30 PM, Krakow, Poland, “Free software and your freedom”
- March 18, 2013, 03:00 PM, Poitiers, France, “The free software movement”
- March 19, 2013, 07:30 PM, Niort, France, “A free digital society”
Other FSF and free software events
- February 2nd-3rd, 2013, Brussels, Belgium, FOSDEM 2013. FSF executive director John Sullivan speaks on February 3rd at 10am.
- March 23-24, 2013, Cambridge, MA, LibrePlanet 2013
Welcome to the Free Software Supporter, the Free Software Foundation's monthly news digest and action update — being read by you and 66,316 other activists. That's 1,114 more than last month!
View this issue online here: http://www.fsf.org/free-
Encourage your friends to subscribe and help us build an audience by adding our subscriber widget to your web site.
- Subscribe: http://www.fsf.org/free-
software-supporter - Widget: http://www.fsf.org/associate/
widget
Miss an issue? You can catch up on back issues at http://www.fsf.org/free-
Para cambiar las preferencias de usuario y recibir los próximos números del Supporter en español, haz click aquí: https://crm.fsf.org/civicrm/
