Free Software Supporter
Issue 56, November 2012
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Give freely this Cyber Monday: Introducing the 2012 Giving Guide
- Tell Amazon: Books and libraries shouldn't have a kill switch
- MediaGoblin crowdfunding campaign: huge success!
- Let’s limit the effect of software patents, since we can’t eliminate them
- Left wondering why VLC relicensed to LGPL
- Good “End Software Patents” video – not by us
- Finnish activist, Danish hacker share Nordic Free Software Award 2012
- LibreWRT: What we use for wifi at the FSF
- FSFE meeting the FSF crew in Boston
- Fall 2012: Photos from ICT Goes International, in Helsinki
- FSF to begin accepting scanned assignments from Germany
- Join the FSF and friends in updating the Free Software Directory
- LibrePlanet featured resource: 2013 LibrePlanet conference
- GNU Spotlight with Karl Berry: 22 new GNU releases!
- GNU Toolchain update
- Richard Stallman's speaking schedule
- Thank GNUs!
- Take action with the FSF
Give freely this Cyber Monday: Introducing the 2012 Giving Guide
From November 26th
Holiday shopping has begun! Unfortunately, most technology gifts are Trojan horses that will spy on their recipients, prevent them from doing what they want with their device, or maybe even block access to their favorite books or music.
The Free Software Foundation is proud to introduce the antidote: our 2012 Giving Guide. The Giving Guide features gifts that will not only make your recipients jump for joy, these gifts will also protect their user freedom.
Go directly to the Giving Guide:
Or check out the Defective by Design blog post about the Giving Guide:
And our press release:
Tell Amazon: Books and libraries shouldn't have a kill switch
From November 8th
Imagine if you came home and discovered all of your bookshelves ransacked, their contents nowhere to be found. That's what happened to Amazon customer Linn, but the bookshelves were digital. Read more and take action against Amazon's unfair use of DRM.
MediaGoblin crowdfunding campaign: huge success!
From November 12th
Chris Webber of MediaGoblin writes “This is no small accomplishment and we should feel proud of it… we deserve to feel proud of it!
“So you are probably wondering! What exactly did you all finance? How can you expect this set of money to be used? Well, let me tell you! Basically: you have bought a year (plus a couple bonus months, actually) of me working on MediaGoblin fulltime!”
Let’s limit the effect of software patents, since we can’t eliminate them
From November 2nd
In this WIRED article, Richard Stallman shares his radical proposal to end the crisis of software patents, writing “My suggestion is to change the effect of patents. We should legislate that developing, distributing, or running a program on generally used computing hardware does not constitute patent infringement.”
Here's the article on the WIRED website:
Here's a post from the End Software Patents campaign about RMS's article:
Left wondering why VLC relicensed to LGPL
From November 22nd
FSF board member Bradley Kuhn asks, “Do they want proprietary application interfaces that use their core libraries? If so, I'm left wondering why: VLC is already so popular that they could pull adopters toward software freedom by using the strong copyleft of GPL. It seems to me they're making a bad trade-off to get only marginally more popular by allowing some proprietary derivatives.”
Good “End Software Patents” video –- not by us
From November 28th
There’s a good anti-software-patent video on YouTube (in WebM video format). Despite the name it has no connection to the End Software Patents campaign, but it’s a very good two-minute video explaining some of the problems of software patents.
To download the video directly without using YouTube's nonfree JavaScript, install youtube-dl and run this command:
youtube-dl “https://www.youtube.com/
Finnish activist, Danish hacker share Nordic Free Software Award 2012
From November 12th
With the Nordic Free Software award, given out for the 6th time this year, the Swedish Association for Free Software and Free Culture (FFKP, Föreningen Fri Kultur och Programvara) honors people and projects who have made important contributions to software freedom.
LibreWRT: What we use for wifi at the FSF
From November 6th
Sysadmin Martin Dluhos would like to take a few moments to introduce Buffalo, the access point and router which provides network connectivity to portable computers in the FSF's office.
FSFE meeting the FSF crew in Boston
From October 30th
Matthias Kirschner of FSF Europe writes: “I like it when I have the opportunity to talk to people with whom I usually just write e-mails. So before my vacation, I made a side trip to visit some FSF activists in Boston.”
Fall 2012: Photos from ICT Goes International, in Helsinki
On November 6th, RMS was in Helsinki, Finland, at Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences to deliver a couple of speeches to some 250 teachers and students, including a how-to for beginning contributing to a free software project and doing a good job.
FSF to begin accepting scanned assignments from Germany
From November 15th
The FSF is pleased to announce that we can begin accepting scanned copyright assignments from contributors residing in Germany.
Join the FSF and friends in updating the Free Software Directory
From November 29th
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, December 7th from 2 PM to 5 PM EDT (19:00 to 22:00 UTC). Details here:
After this meeting, check http://fsf.org/events for the rest of November's weekly meetings.
LibrePlanet featured resource: 2013 LibrePlanet conference
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 page for the March 2013 LibrePlanet conference, a yearly gathering of the global free software community. Visit the page to stay up-to-date on conference details and make suggestions for lightning talks.
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 this month (as of November 27, 2012):
- autoconf-archive-2012.11.14
- gengetopt-2.22.6
- libzrtpcpp-2.3.2
- automake-1.12.5
- global-6.2.5
- parallel-20121122
- binutils-2.23.1
- gnunet-0.9.4
- pyconfigure-0.1
- bison-2.6.5
- gnunet-gtk-0.9.4
- sipwitch-1.4.0
- ccrtp-2.0.5
- gnutls-3.1.5
- solfege-3.20.7
- complexity-1.0
- libmicrohttpd-0.9.23
- ucommon-6.0.1
- ed-1.7
- librejs-4.9.2
- freeipmi-1.2.3
- libtasn1-3.1
To get announcements of most new GNU releases, subscribe to the info-gnu mailing list: http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/
I'd like to specially mention the first release of GNU pyconfigure http://www.gnu.org/software/
Another special mention for Ludovic Courtes for his new GNU package (system) Guix, http://www.gnu.org/software/
We also welcome Dimitry Bogatov as the new maintainer of GNU Thales, Brian Lane and Phillip Susi as new co-maintainers of GNU parted, Hellekin and Daniel Reusche as new co-maintainers of GNU social, Fabio Gonzalez as the author and maintainer of the new GNU package fcrypt, and Paulo Cesar Pereira de Andrade as the new maintainer of GNU lightning.
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.
GNU Toolchain update
From November 19th
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 .
So far, Richard Stallman has the following events in December and January:
- Dec 01, 2012, 05:30 PM, Goiânia, Brazil, “El software libre y tu libertad”
- Dec 11, 2012, 10:00 AM, Sao Carlos, Brazil, “A Free Digital Society”
- Dec 12, 2012, 02:00 PM, Sorocaba, Brazil, “Free Software and Your Freedom”
- Jan 17, 2013, 04:15 PM, Ann Arbor, MI, “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:
- Chapman Shoop
- Trevor Spiteri
- Aaron Culich
- Peter Kunze
- Alessandro Vesely
- Colin Carr
- Neal Pawar
- Alison Chaiken
- Norman Richards
- Adam Klotblixt
- Jelte van der Hoek
- Ken Wong
- Boulder Labs, Inc.
- Aeva Palecek
- Sebastian Spaeth
- Nathan Yergler
- Jeffrey Moe
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 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?
The FSF is also always looking for volunteers (http://www.fsf.org/volunteer)
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Copyright © 2012 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/
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