Free Software Supporter

Issue 122, June 2018

Welcome to the Free Software Supporter, the Free Software Foundation's (FSF) monthly news digest and action update -- being read by you and 188,143 other activists. That's 934 more than last month!

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Zerocat Chipflasher "board-edition-1" now FSF-certified to Respect Your Freedom


• Minifree Libreboot X200 Tablet now FSF-certified to Respect Your Freedom


• "Clear History"? Why not #DeleteFacebook instead


• Success for net neutrality, success for free software


• Save Code Share! Sign the open letter


• Deb Nicholson joins Conservancy as Director of Community Operations


• GNOME Foundation news: Anonymous donor pledges $1M donation over two years


• Once again, activists must beg the US government to preserve the right to repair


• "I agree": Visualizing terms of service with long scrolls of colored paper


• Facebook’s dating service is a chance to meet the catfisher, advertiser or scammer of your dreams


• April and May 2018: RMS photos from Ottawa and Montreal


• Liberating amusing use cases with the F60 Action Camera introduction: Motivations for going down the road


• Software Heritage is hiring a back-end developer


• GCC 8 release series: GCC 8.1


• GIMP 2.10.2 released


• Announcing the GNOME internship program


• Free Software Directory meeting recap


• Join the FSF and friends in updating the Free Software Directory


• LibrePlanet featured resource: Skype replacement


• GNU Spotlight with Mike Gerwitz: 17 new GNU releases!


• GNU Toolchain update: Support GNU Toolchain


• Richard Stallman's speaking schedule


• Thank GNUs!


• GNU copyright contributions


• Take action with the FSF!

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Zerocat Chipflasher "board-edition-1" now FSF-certified to Respect Your Freedom

From May 14

The FSF has awarded Respects Your Freedom (RYF) certification to the Zerocat Chipflasher board-edition-1. The RYF certification mark means that the product meets the FSF's standards in regard to users' freedom, control over the product, and privacy. The Chipflasher enables users to flash devices such as laptops, allowing them to replace proprietary software with free software like Libreboot. While users are able to purchase RYF-certified laptops that already come with Libreboot pre-loaded, for the first time ever they are capable of freeing their own laptops using an RYF-certified device.

These first ten limited edition boards are signed by Kai Mertens, chief developer of The Zerocat Label, and will help to fund additional production and future development of RYF-certified devices.

• https://www.fsf.org/news/zerocat-chipflasher-board-edition-1-now-fsf-certified-to-respect-your-freedom

Minifree Libreboot X200 Tablet now FSF-certified to Respect Your Freedom

From May 30

The FSF has awarded Respects Your Freedom (RYF) certification to the Libreboot X200 Tablet, from Minifree Ltd. This is the third device from Minifree Ltd to receive RYF certification. The Libreboot X200 Tablet is a fully free laptop/tablet hybrid that comes with Trisquel and Libreboot pre-installed. The device is similar to the previously certified Libreboot X200 laptop, but with a built-in tablet that enables users to draw, sign documents, or make handwritten notes. Like all devices from Minifree Ltd, purchasing the Libreboot X200 Tablet helps to fund development of Libreboot, the free boot firmware that currently runs on all RYF-certified laptops. It may be purchased at href="https://minifree.org/product/libreboot-x200-tablet/">https://minifree.org/product/libreboot-x200-tablet/, and comes with free technical support included.

• https://www.fsf.org/news/minifree-libreboot-x200-tablet-now-fsf-certified-to-respect-your-freedom

"Clear History"? Why not #DeleteFacebook instead

From May 3

Zuckerberg claims that "clear history" will allow users to clear their browsing history on Facebook, apparently including activity like which Web sites one has visited. This is an empty gesture. Facebook is clearly attempting to placate an angry public and defend itself against scrutiny by the US government, but it is still putting the impetus to protect user privacy on users, rather than simply choosing not to collect information on Facebook users in the first place. We urge you to #DeleteFacebook and try a decentralized social media option that respects your freedom instead!

• https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/clear-history-why-not-deletefacebook-instead

Success for net neutrality, success for free software

From May 25

We've had great success with the United States Senate voting in support of net neutrality! Congratulations and thank you to everyone in the US for contacting your congresspeople, and all of you who helped spread the word. Now that the Congressional Review Act (CRA) has passed the Senate, it moves to the House of Representatives. Just as we asked you to call your senators, now it's time to call your House representatives. Find their contact info here and use the script below to ask them to support the reinstatement of net neutrality protections. If you're outside the US, inform yourself and others by reading this and sharing it widely.

• https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/success-for-net-neutrality-success-for-free-software

Save Code Share! Sign the open letter

From April 26 by Frédéric Couchet

Free software development as we know it is being threatened by the proposed review of the European Copyright Directive. The Legal Affairs Committee (JURI) of the European Parliament will vote on June 20 and 21, 2018. Article 13 is a particular threat to free software, which is often built by collaborative networks of programmers that rely on code hosting services. Sign this open letter and share it with your friends and colleagues to support the effort to save Europe's digital future!

• https://www.april.org/en/save-code-share-sign-open-letter

Deb Nicholson joins Conservancy as director of community operations

From May 1 by Software Freedom Conservancy

Deb Nicholson, software freedom advocate and organizer, LibrePlanet 2018 keynote, and former FSF staff member, has joined Conservancy as director of community operations. “Deb has been a force for software freedom,” said Karen Sandler, Conservancy’s executive director. “In her jobs and as a volunteer she has had a strong impact on the communities she’s participated in. She’s a great fit for Conservancy and we’re all excited to work with her.” Congratulations, Deb!

• https://sfconservancy.org/news/2018/may/01/deb-nicholson-director-community-operations/

GNOME Foundation news: Anonymous donor pledges $1M donation over two years

From May 25 by GNOME Foundation

An anonymous donor has pledged to donate up to $1,000,000 over the next two years, some of which will be matching funds. The GNOME Foundation is grateful for this donation and plans on using these funds to increase staff to streamline operations and to grow its support of the GNOME Project.

• https://www.gnome.org/news/2018/05/anonymous-donor-pledges-1m-donation-over-two-years/

Once again, activists must beg the US government to preserve the right to repair

From May 2 by Karl Bode

The excruciating Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) section 1201 exemption process is upon us again, and the right to repair tractors, cars, and electronics is at stake. The terribly crafted provision routinely prevents consumers and researchers from being able to do some fairly fundamental things, like repairing their own vehicles. For ways to fight back, check out the FSF's article, "Meet the latest DRM drones."

• https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/mbxzyv/dmca-1201-exemptions

"I agree": Visualizing terms of service with long scrolls of colored paper

From May 7 by Cory Doctorow

"I Agree" is Dima Yarovinsky's art installation for Visualizing Knowledge 2018, with printouts of the terms of service for common apps on scrolls of colored paper, creating a bar chart of the fine print that nobody reads.

• https://boingboing.net/2018/05/07/tldr.html

Facebook’s dating service is a chance to meet the catfisher, advertiser or scammer of your dreams

From May 3 by Drew Harwell and Elizabeth Dwoskin

Facebook -- under fire for viral misinformation, fake accounts and breaches of trust -- said that it will soon offer a new dating service designed to help its users find love, giving the world’s largest social network a uniquely intimate vantage point on its users’ romantic desires and personal lives. Will Facebook take all of this uniquely sensitive material and handle it with care? Its previous behavior, and its control over your computing via Service as a Software Substitute make it clear that dating via Facebook is a comically bad idea.

• https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2018/05/03/facebooks-dating-service-is-a-chance-to-meet-the-catfisher-advertiser-or-scammer-of-your-dreams

April and May 2018: RMS photos from Ottawa and Montreal

From June 1

FSF president Richard Stallman (RMS) was in Canada in April and in May 2018 to participate in a couple of events in Ottawa, during the discussion "Two lessons from the Phoenix payroll puzzle," and Montreal, at the Adte's annual colloquium.

He was in Ottawa, to support an initiative to create a free software solution to the Canadian government's employee payroll debacle. He and Joseph Potvin, executive director of Xalgorithms Foundation, led a breakfast discussion titled "Two lessons from the Phoenix payroll puzzle: Software freedom & algorithm accessibility."

• https://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/photo-blog-2018-april-montreal-ottawa

Liberating amusing use cases with the F60 Action Camera introduction: Motivations for going down the road

From May 19 by Paul Kocialkowski

Paul Kocialkowski is interested in the support of reverse engineering work for Replicant, free software mobile operating system, and the Allwinner platform. In this status update, Kocialkowski covers why this work is necessary, as well as the current status of free upstream support and the F60 Action Camera as a case study.

• https://code.paulk.fr/article26/liberating-amusing-use-cases-with-the-f60-action-camera-introduction-motivations-for-going-down-the-road

Software Heritage is hiring a back-end developer

From May 2 by Software Heritage

Software Heritage is hiring a back-end developer to join their Paris-based team. The new developer will help Software Heritage fulfill its software preservation mission by extending archive coverage and rolling out several user-facing features that allow users to access and exploit all the software we have collected. The new hire will juggle with an impressive dataset, the largest to date about software development, and contribute to a fully free software stack.

• https://www.softwareheritage.org/2018/05/02/were-hiring-back-end-developer/

GCC 8 release series: GCC 8.1

From May 2 by GCC developers

The GNU Project and the GCC developers are pleased to announce the release of GCC 8.1. This release is a major release, containing new features (as well as many other improvements) relative to GCC 7.x.

• https://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-8/

GIMP 2.10.2 released

From May 20 by Wilber

It’s barely been a month since we released GIMP 2.10.0, and the first bugfix version 2.10.2 is already here! Its main purpose is fixing the various bugs and issues which were to be expected after the 2.10.0 release. Therefore, 44 bugs have been fixed in less than a month!

• https://www.gimp.org/news/2018/05/20/gimp-2-10-2-released/

Announcing the GNOME internship program

From May 8 by GNOME Foundation

The goal of the GNOME internship program is to bring development towards topics that are critical to further GNOME goals. To achieve such important tasks, software engineering and non-engineering projects are welcome, and everyone is encouraged to apply. Since these tasks are considered to be of higher complexity than other internships programs in the free software community recommend, GNOME internships will have a stipend of $8,000 for a 3-month period.

• https://www.gnome.org/news/2018/05/announcing-the-gnome-internship-program/

Free Software Directory meeting recap

Check out the great work our volunteers accomplished at the May Free Software Directory meetings. Every week free software activists from around the world come together in #fsf on irc.freenode.org to help improve the Free Software Directory.

• https://www.fsf.org/blogs/directory/free-software-directory-meeting-recap-may-2018-1

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. Meetings take place in the #fsf channel on irc.freenode.org, and usually include a handful of regulars as well as newcomers. Freenode is accessible from any IRC client -- Everyone's welcome!

The next meeting is Friday, June 8, from 12pm to 3pm EDT (16:00 to 19:00 UTC). Details here:

• https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Free_Software_Directory:Meetings

LibrePlanet featured resource: Skype replacement

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 Skype replacement, which provides information about free software options for real-time voice and video chat, which is an item on the FSF's High Priority Projects list. You are invited to adopt, spread and improve this important resource.

• https://libreplanet.org/wiki/Group:Skype_Replacement

Do you have a suggestion for next month's featured resource? Let us know at campaigns-at-fsf.org.

GNU Spotlight with Mike Gerwitz: 17 new GNU releases!

• artanis-1.2.5


• emms-5.0


• fontopia-1.8.4


• freeipmi-1.6.2


• gama-2.00


• gcc-8.1.0


• gnudos-1.11.4


• gnupg-2.2.7


• guile-cv-0.1.9


• libidn2-2.0.5


• librejs-7.14.1


• linux-libre-4.16.11-gnu


• mcsim-6.0.1


• nano-2.9.7


• octave-4.4.0


• parallel-20180522


• wget-1.19.5

For announcements of most new GNU releases, subscribe to the info-gnu mailing list: https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/info-gnu.

To download: nearly all GNU software is available from https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/, or preferably one of its mirrors from https://www.gnu.org/prep/ftp.html. You can use the URL https://ftpmirror.gnu.org/ to be automatically redirected to a (hopefully) nearby and up-to-date mirror.

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.

If you have a working or partly working program that you'd like to offer to the GNU project as a GNU package, see https://www.gnu.org/help/evaluation.html.

As always, please feel free to write to us at maintainers-at-gnu.org with any GNUish questions or suggestions for future installments.

GNU Toolchain update: Support GNU Toolchain

Donate to support the GNU Toolchain, a collection of foundational freely licensed software development tools including the GNU C Compiler collection (GCC), the GNU C Library (glibc), and the GNU Debugger (GDB).

• https://my.fsf.org/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=57

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 coming up:

• June 2, 2018, Mar del Plata, Argentina, "Title TBA"


• June 4, 2018, Pato Branco, Brazil, "Title TBA"


• June 6, 2018, São Paulo, Brazil, "A Free Digital Society"


• June 16, 2018, Barcelona, Spain, "Title TBA"


• June 18, 2018, Barcelona, Spain, "Title TBA"


• July 22, 2018, New York, NY, "We must legislate to block collection of personal data"

Thank GNUs!

We appreciate everyone who donates to the Free Software Foundation, and we'd like to give special recognition to the folks who have donated $500 or more in the last month.

• https://www.gnu.org/thankgnus/2018supporters.html

This month, a big Thank GNU to:

• C-SATS Inc.


• David Klann


• David Potter


• Deepak Ponvel Chermakani


• Minoru Sekine


• Vladimír Pospíil

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

GNU copyright contributions

Assigning your copyright to the Free Software Foundation helps us defend the GPL and keep software free. The following individuals have assigned their copyright to the FSF in the past month:

• Aniketh Gireesh (GNU) (Wget)


• Christoph Müllner (GCC)


• Daniel Hubmann (Emacs)


• Hrishikesh Kulkarni (GCC)


• Marko Crnic (Emacs)


• Matthias Paulmier (Automake)


• Stjepan Brkic (GNUstep)


• Vishal Gupta (Automake)


• Vivek Das Mohapatra (glibc)

Want to see your name on this list? Contribute to GNU and assign your copyright to the FSF.

• https://www.gnu.org/server/takeaction.html#dev

Take action with the FSF!

Contributions from thousands of individual members enable the FSF's work. You can contribute by joining at https://my.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://my.fsf.org/join

The FSF is 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 campaigns section (https://www.fsf.org/campaigns) and take action on software patents, Digital Restrictions Management (DRM), free software adoption, OpenDocument, Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), and more.

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Copyright © 2018 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.