Free Software Supporter
Issue 41, August 2011
Welcome to the Free Software Supporter, the Free Software Foundation’s monthly news digest and action update — being read by you and 45,864 other activists. That’s 1375 more than last month!
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Sign our petition to ask This American Life to support free formats!
- Android GPLv2 termination worries: one more reason to upgrade to GPLv3
- Europe’s « unitary patent » could mean unlimited software patents
- Software Freedom Day: September 17th
- GNU Emacs Manual, Sixteenth Edition for Version 23.3 now available
- Let Barnes & Noble know that the Nook is Defective by Design
- Spotify is Defective by Design
- Free Technology Academy courses start September 12th!
- Send in your nominations for the Nordic Free Software Award!
- A selection of photographs from some of RMS’s past events
- Speaking of software patents
- FSF seeks full-time senior GNU/Linux systems administrator
- LibrePlanet featured resource: LibrePlanet Events Calendar
- GNU Spotlight with Karl Berry
- Richard Stallman’s speaking schedule
- Other FSF and free software events
- Take action with the FSF
Sign our petition to ask This American Life to support free formats!
Ogg supporters sent great emails to This American Life thanking them for their show detailing the problems with software patents and asking them to be part of the solution by using Ogg Vorbis instead of patent-encumbered MP3. Find out more about our initial call to action, read some of the letters people have been sending, and sign the petition and make your voice heard!
Android GPLv2 termination worries: one more reason to upgrade to GPLv3
Android’s commercial success has brought with it an uptick of GPL violation reports. In this news article, Brett Smith urges Android vendors and developers of the Kernel Linux to make the switch go GPLv3 to take advantage of the improved termination agreements as it will allow the free software community to « get both compliance and more allies. »
Europe’s « unitary patent » could mean unlimited software patents
Richard Stallman published an article for The Guardian in which he outlines the history, politics-behind, and dangers of the EU’s Unitary Patent proposal.
- End Software Patents reprint: http://news.swpat.org/2011/08/europes-unitary-patent-could-mean-unlimited-software-patents/
- The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/aug/22/european-unitary-patent-software-warning
- More information about the drawbacks and legal flaws of this plan can be found at http://unitary-patent.eu
Software Freedom Day: September 17th
Software Freedom Day is right around the corner and there are events all around the world this year! In Boston, we will be joining free software activist and former FSF staffer, Deb Nicholson and Boston-area free software communities for a hands-on and fun day of activities and socializing.
- SFD Events map: http://softwarefreedomday.org/map/index.php?year=2011
- Boston SFD event: http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/sfd-2011-local-does-compute
GNU Emacs Manual, Sixteenth Edition for Version 23.3 now available
We here at GNU Press are proud to announce the release of the latest version of our GNU Emacs Manual for GNU Emacs version 23.3. This latest edition updates one our most popular reference manuals for the current version of GNU Emacs. Much has been added since the previous release, and the new manual features almost a hundred pages of additional documentation.
- Learn more: http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/emacs-23.3-manual
- Purchase: http://shop.fsf.org/product/emacs_manual_23/
Let Barnes & Noble know that the Nook is Defective by Design
The Nook represents a real threat to users because of its invasive DRM, close relationship with DRM champions Adobe, and because of its use of the Android operating system — which might lead many to think the Nook is not defective by design. Read more about your alternatives to using DRM-infected Android system and how you can take action, now!
Spotify is Defective by Design
The music streaming service Spotify uses Digital Restrictions Management (DRM); we are asking you to join us in saying NO to Spotify’s invitations and to help us make our message clear by sending letters to Spotify’s CEO.
Free Technology Academy courses start September 12th!
The Free Technology Academy (FTA) is a joint initiative from several educational institutions in various countries. It aims to contribute to a society that permits all users to study, participate and build upon existing knowledge without restrictions. Some of the things being taught this term include the relationship between free software and free standards, and a focus on deployments of free software.
Remember: 30 FSF associate members can receive a discount on these courses for each trimester, so sign-up now for the fall term!
- https://ftacademy.org/
Send in your nominations for the Nordic Free Software Award!
The Nordic Free Software Award is given to people, projects or organizations in the Nordic countries that have made a prominent contribution to the advancement of free software.
The award will be announced during the FSCONS (Free Society Conference and Nordic Summit) 2011 in Gothenburg, Sweden. Nominations should be made by email and the nomination period ends on October 22nd.
- http://fscons.org/nordic-free-software-award
A selection of photographs from some of RMS’s past events
Richard Stallman gives talks all over the world to many different kinds of groups, in a variety of venues, and in a few different languages. See some of the photographs from events over the past several months.
- http://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/a-selection-of-photographs-from-some-of-rmss-past-events
- http://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/20110307-fds-london
Speaking of software patents
Rob Tiller (Red Hat) has posted an interesting article about three mainstream articles (NPR, The Economist, Professor Mark Lemley) discussing problems caused by software patents. We’ve put together a nice summary of the article along with additional links.
- End Software Patents summary: http://news.swpat.org/2011/08/more-than-trolls/
- The original article: http://opensource.com/law/11/8/speaking-software-patents
FSF seeks full-time senior GNU/Linux systems administrator
« The ideal candidate will be a well-rounded GNU/Linux systems administrator who enjoys learning and problem-solving. (S)he will be familiar with the free software community and how it works, and will be more interested in making a substantial contribution to software freedom and having employment consistent with ethical ideals than obtaining the highest salary. »
Interested in applying or know someone else who you think should?
LibrePlanet featured resource: LibrePlanet Events Calendar
Each month, we feature an interesting resource, group, or project in-progress on the wiki. For this month, we are featuring the LibrePlanet Events Calendar. There were a number of free software events that landed on the calendar in August and even more are schedule for September. If you or any of your groups are hosting in event, please add it to the calendar.
Do you have a suggestion for next month’s featured resource? Let us know at campaigns@fsf.org.
GNU Spotlight with Karl Berry
New GNU releases: archimedes-1.0.0 gnupg-2.0.18 pem-0.7.9 bzr-2.4.0 gnutls-2.12.9 rcs-5.8 diffutils-3.1 gnutls-3.0.1 sipwitch-1.1.1 gama-1.11 gsrc-1.0.1 tramp-2.2.2 gdbm-1.9.1 icecat-6.0 wget-1.13.3 glpk-4.46 libiconv-1.14 xnee-3.10 gnuhealth.1.3.1 parallel-20110822 xorriso-1.1.4
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 Adrienne Thompson as the maintainer of the new GNU package c-graph, and Luis Falcon as the maintainer of the new package Health. We also welcome Hartmut Rosch as the new maintainer of maverik, and Julia Longtin as the new maintain of gift. Finally, we welcome Micheal Harker as co-maintainer of gnatsweb, and Stefano Lattarini and Jim Meyering as co-maintainers of Automake.
I’d like to specially mention the first release of GNU GSRC http://www.gnu.org/software/gsrc/, providing a simple way to install GNU packages from their original sources, entirely independent of any distro packaging system.
Another special mention must go to the new package GNU Health http://www.gnu.org/software/health, a large health and hospital information system, which the United Nations Institute of Global Health in Malaysia is starting to use throughout the region.
Several 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
2011-09-02 Event Por una sociedad digital libre, Neuquen, Argentina
2011-09-03 Event El movimiento del software libre, Neuquen, Argentina
2011-09-05 Event El software libre y tu libertad, Misiones Posadas, Argentina
2011-09-07 Event El movimiento del software libre, Ciudad de la Plata, Argentina
2011-09-09 Event Por una sociedad digital libre, Buenos Aires, Argentina
2011-09-14 Event Mar del Plata, Argentina, Mar del Plata, Argentina
Other FSF and free software events
2011-09-02 LibreOffice Hackfest 2011, Munich, Germany
2011-09-17 Software Freedom Day, Events Around the World
- Map: http://softwarefreedomday.org/map/index.php?year=2011
- Table: http://softwarefreedomday.org/map/index.php?year=2011#teamlist
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 © 2011 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
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Thanks for publishing the newsletter :). You might want to remove those unsubscribe links at the end though — otherwise other people/bots can unsubscribe you :/.
I’m a subscriber, and I share 😉
Good idea for the link !