Free Software Supporter
Issue 47, February 2012
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
- LibrePlanet 2012 registration is now open!
- Free Your Android!
- FaiF OggCast with John Sullivan: Is Copyleft Being Framed?
- GNU/FSF servers are moving
- Tell the US Trade Representative that strong-arming countries into US law isn’t what you want
- I ♥ Free Software 2012
- FSF Supports Proposed Exemptions to DMCA Anti-Circumvention Rules
- Anobii CEO urges publishers to drop DRM on ebooks
- LibrePlanet featured resource: LibrePlanet2012/LightningTalks
- GNU Spotlight with Karl Berry
- Richard Stallman’s speaking schedule
- Other FSF and free software events
- Take action with the FSF
LibrePlanet 2012 registration is now open!
Registration is now open for LibrePlanet 2012! For those of you who’ve been to one of our LibrePlanet conferences before, you know you can expect some of the best people in the free software community in a fantastic community setting. This year’s conference is going to be larger than ever!
Don’t delay, registration is now open, and as always, FSF associate members can attend for no extra charge as part of their membership — excluding food and t-shirt costs.
Learn more about the schedule, info on local hotels, and join the mailing list for coordinating room sharing and carpooling.
Free Your Android!
Last Fall, Richard Stallman published an article in which he states that, « for a computer user that values freedom », the most important question to be asking yourself about the Android operating system is: « [t]o what extent does Android respect the freedom of its users? »
If you are interested in finding the answer to this question, then the Free Software Foundation Europe has just the resource for you! Their new campaign, Free Your Android, delves into issues of freedom, privacy, and control as they relate to the various services, markets, and apps for Android.
FaiF OggCast with John Sullivan: Is Copyleft Being Framed?
In this Free as in Freedom OggCast, Karen Sandler and Bradley Kuhn play and discuss John Sullivan’s talk entitled Is Copyleft Being Framed? from the FOSDEM 2012 Legal and Policy Issues DevRoom.
Summary:
Ogg download:
GNU/FSF servers are moving
The GNU/FSF servers are moving between February 22nd and March 1st, 2012. There will be service interruptions during that period. There will be a multi-hour outage for most services on February 28th, 2012, starting at 10am EST (UTC/GMT -5).
Identi.ca fsfstatus group:
- https://identi.ca/group/fsfstatus
If the FSF hosts a virtual machine for your organization, please contact sysadmin@gnu.org to plan the migration of your virtual machine.
Tell the US Trade Representative that strong-arming countries into US law isn’t what you want
Sign a petition from our friends at Public Knowledge, telling the USTR to be wary of the interests of large media companies who don’t represent the interests of most people in the US.
I ♥ Free Software 2012
« In the free software community, we exchange a lot of criticism. We write bug reports, tell others how they can improve the software, ask them for new features, and generally are not shy about criticising others. Sometimes we forget to say thank you, for all your work. » — Matthias Kirschner, #ilovefs campaign manager
Learn more about the FSF Europe’s « I ♥ Free Software 2012 » day that took place on February 14th — find out how you can still participate.
FSF Supports Proposed Exemptions to DMCA Anti-Circumvention Rules
The Free Software Foundation submitted comments to support exemptions to allow users to install free software on all kinds of devices, and view and play media encumbered with Digital Restrictions Management (DRM).
- http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/supporting-dmca-exemptions
The full text is available in PDF:
- http://static.fsf.org/nosvn/2012-02-dmca-exceptions.pdf
Anobii CEO urges publishers to drop DRM on ebooks
Speaking at the Digital Book World Conference in New York last week, Matteo Berlucchi, CEO of Anobii, urged major book publishers to abandon their use of DRM on ebooks. HarperCollins, Penguin, and Random House each have a stake in the ebook retail and social networking company based in the UK.
LibrePlanet featured resource: LibrePlanet2012/LightningTalks
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 organizing Lightning Talks for the LibrePlanet 2012 Conference.
Do you have a suggestion for next month’s featured resource? Let us know at campaigns@fsf.org.
GNU Spotlight with Karl Berry
autogen-5.15 gnunet-0.9.2 libmicrohttpd-0.9.19 automake-1.11.3 gnupg-1.4.12 octave-3.6.1 emacs-23.4 gnutls-3.0.14 parallel-20120222 freeipmi-1.1.2 guile-2.0.5 sipwitch-1.2.3 global-6.2.1 gxmessage-2.20.0 stow-2.2.0 gmp-5.0.4 help2man-1.40.6 ucommon-5.2.1 gnash-0.8.10 icecat-10.0 xnee-3.12 gnuhealth-1.4.3 idutils-4.6 xorriso-1.2.0 gnun-0.5 ignuit-2.20.0 zile-2.4.6
To get announcements of most new GNU releases, subscribe to the info-gnu mailing list: http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/info-gnu. Nearly all GNU software is available from http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/, or preferably one of its mirrors (http://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 Anto Cvitic as the new maintainer of ggradebook, and Jose Luis Garcia Pallero as the new maintainer of the GNU Scientific Library (GSL). Jose would very much appreciate additional volunteers! Please contact him through the usual GSL lists.
Several other GNU packages are looking for maintainers and other assistance. Please see http://www.gnu.org/server/takeaction.html#unmaint if you’d like to help. The general page on how to help GNU is at http://www.gnu.org/help/help.html. To submit new packages to GNU, see http://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.
Richard Stallman’s speaking schedule
For detailed information for each of the events below, see: * http://www.fsf.org/events/rms-speeches.html
- Mar 01, Madrid, Spain « Por una sociedad digital libre »
- Mar 07, Sunnyvale, CA « Copyright vs. Community »
- Mar 13, Republic of Singapore « Free Software and Your Freedom »
- Mar 14, Republic of Singapore « For a Free Digital Society »
- Mar 27, New York, NY « For a Free Digital Society »
- Mar 29, West Lafayette, IN « The Free Software Movement »
- Apr 03, Ashland, OR « Copyright vs. Community »
- Apr 04, Ashland, OR « For a Free Digital Society »
- Jul 10, Dresden, Germany « The Free Software Movement »
Other FSF and free software events
« Free Software and Law », Brett Smith from the FSF 5 March, 2012, 6 p.m. — Melbourne, Australia
- http://apps.freesoftware.asn.au/invite/brett-smith-fsf/
Northeast GNU/Linux Fest March 17, 2012 — Worcester, Massachusetts
CiviCon San Francisco
April 02, 2012 — Berkeley, CA
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?referrer=2442
The FSF is also always looking for volunteers (http://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 (http://www.fsf.org/campaigns) and take action on software patents, DRM, free software adoption, OpenDocument, RIAA and more.
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The Free Software Supporter is edited by FSF volunteer Osama Khalid.
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/licenses/by-nd/3.0/us/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.
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