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Richard Stallman: Free Software Issue 60 November 2013

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Richard Stallman
Richard Stallman

Free Software Supporter

Issue 68, November 2013

TABLE OF CONTENTS

  • Give freely this Cyber Monday: Introducing the 2013 Giving Guide
  • FSF campaigns manager speaks about free software at iD Programming Academy
  • LibrePlanet 2014 dates announced
  • Avaneya releases libre game for GNU/Linux based on lost NASA archives
  • Rockstar vs. Google: software patents as a license for privateering
  • When DRM comes to cars
  • LibrePlanet featured resource: GNU Press ideas
  • GNU Spotlight with Karl Berry: 44 new GNU releases!
  • GNU Toolchain Update
  • Richard Stallman's speaking schedule and other FSF events
  • Thank GNUs!
  • Take action with the FSF!

Give freely this Cyber Monday: Introducing the 2013 Giving Guide

The Free Software Foundation is proud to announce our 2013 Giving Guide. The Giving Guide features gifts that will not only make your recipients jump for joy; these gifts will also protect their freedom.

Press release:

FSF campaigns manager speaks about free software at iD Programming Academy

From November 7th

Introducing new people to free software is an integral part of our mission at the FSF, so we were delighted when the director of a summer programming academy called and invited us to speak.

LibrePlanet 2014 dates announced

From November 12th

LibrePlanet is the annual conference of the Free Software Foundation. The next conference conference will take place on March 22 and 23, 2014 in Cambridge, MA. There are still plenty of ways to get involved, including applying to join our Exhibit Hall or joining our new Volunteer Committee.

Avaneya releases libre game for GNU/Linux based on lost NASA archives

By Avaneya, from November 5th

Avaneya is a science fiction game for GNU/Linux currently under active development. The project has released a tool to convert imagery from NASA's Viking 1 mission, which resulted in the first ever photographs of the Martian surface, from a legacy format into PNG files.

Rockstar vs. Google: software patents as a license for privateering

By FSF Europe, from November 7th

Rockstar, a consortium of companies formed to collect certain patents put on sale in the dissolution procedure of Nortel, has sued Google and other companies over seven of those patents.

When DRM comes to cars

By FSF Europe, from November 14th

In its Zoe electric car, car maker Renault apparently has the ability to remotely prevent the battery from charging. And that’s more chilling than it may sound.

Join the FSF and friends in updating the Free Software Directory

From November 27th

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, November 29 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 December's weekly meetings as they are scheduled.

LibrePlanet featured resource: GNU Press ideas

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 Ideas page for GNU Press, which we use to solicit feedback about the FSF shop. This page has been a source of great ideas in the past and we invited you 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: 44 new GNU releases!

44 new GNU releases in the last two months (as of November 25, 2013):

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.

We welcome quite a few new maintainers for this time:

  • Bruce Korb as the maintainer of his new package gnu-pw-mgr; Bruce also maintains autogen, complexity, and sharutils.
  • Carsten Reith as the new maintainer of GNU UUCP.
  • Luis Falcon and Sebastian Marro as co-maintainers of the new package GNU LIMS, adding to Luis's work maintaining GNU Health.
  • Paul Hardy as the maintainer of the new package Unifont (finally officially GNU!).
  • Sami Kerola as a new co-maintainer of GNU Hello.
  • Yann Dirson as the new maintainer of GNU Shogi.

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 November 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 significant improvements to GCC.

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 December:

Other FSF and free software events

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:

  • Jeff Root
  • Pierre-Alain Blanc
  • Wesley Andres Watters
  • Deb Nicholson
  • Richard Fontana
  • Fabián Rodríguez
  • Will Rico and Cindy Fung
  • Jon Howell
  • Boone Gorges
  • Simon Phipps
  • Bruce Baumgart
  • John Gilmore
  • Etienne Grossmann

You can add your name to this list by donating at https://donate.fsf.org.

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, the RIAA and more.

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Copyright © 2013 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/.

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