Welcome to the Free Software Supporter, the Free Software Foundation's
(FSF) monthly news digest and action update -- being read by you and
194,208 other activists. That's 635 more than last month!

LibrePlanet 2019 Call for Sessions deadline extended until Nov 9th

From October 23

Have you submitted a talk for LibrePlanet
2019 yet? The Call for Sessions
(CfS) has been extended
until Friday, November 9th, 2018 at 10:00 EST (14:00 UTC). Visit
https://my.fsf.org/lp-call-for-sessions and log in to submit your
session.

LibrePlanet is an annual conference hosted by the Free Software
Foundation (FSF) that explores the intersection of technology and
social justice through a variety of talks and activities. Every year,
LibrePlanet brings together developers, policy experts, activists,
hackers and end users to learn new skills, share accomplishments, and
face challenges concerning computing freedom as a
community. LibrePlanet 2019's theme is “Trailblazing Free Software”
and will be held on Saturday and Sunday, March 23rd and 24th in the
Greater Boston Area, MA.

• https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/libreplanet-2019-call-for-sessions-deadline-extended-until-nov-9th

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• FSF job opportunity: Program manager


• Announcing keynote speakers for LibrePlanet -- and don't miss your chance to give a talk


• FSF statement on Microsoft joining the Open Invention Network


• Introducing our new associate member forum!


• DMCA exemptions granted but overall process still broken


• Apple's new proprietary software locks will kill independent repair on new MacBook Pros


• Every minute for three months, GM secretly gathered data on 90,000 drivers' radio-listening habits and locations


• Thank you for participating in International Day Against DRM 2018!


• Innovative biography of RMS returns to GNU Press Shop


• Single-board computer guide updated: Free software is winning on ARM!


• The completion of Sonali's Outreachy internship work on the Free Software Directory


• GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) 6.5 released


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


• LibrePlanet featured resource: Community Toolkit


• GNU Spotlight with Mike Gerwitz: 8 new GNU releases!


• GNU Toolchain update: Support GNU Toolchain


• Richard Stallman's speaking schedule and other FSF events


• Thank GNUs!


• Take action with the FSF!

View this issue online here: https://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter/2018/november

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FSF job opportunity: Program manager

From October 10

The FSF seeks a motivated and talented Boston-based individual to be
our full-time program manager. Reporting to the executive director,
the program manager co-leads our campaigns team. This position
develops and promotes longer-term resources and advocacy programs
related to increasing the use of free software and expanding and
advancing the free software movement. The program manager plays a key
role in external communications, fundraising, member engagement, and
special events.

Ideal candidates have at least three to five years of work experience
with project management, fundraising, events management, and nonprofit
program management. Proficiency, experience, and comfort with
professional writing and media relationships preferred. Because the
FSF works globally and seeks to have our materials distributed in as
many languages as possible, multilingual candidates will have an
advantage. For more information on how to apply, see the link below.

• https://www.fsf.org/news/fsf-job-opportunity-program-manager

Announcing keynote speakers for LibrePlanet -- and don't miss your chance to give a talk

From October 18

We're proud to announce the 2019 LibrePlanet keynote speakers: Debian
Project contributor Bdale Garbee, free software activist Micky Metts,
physician Tarek Loubani, and FSF founder and president Richard
Stallman, all of whom are trailblazers of free software in their own
right.

• https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/announcing-keynote-speakers-for-libreplanet-and-dont-miss-your-chance-to-give-a-talk


• https://www.fsf.org/news/keynotes-announced-for-libreplanet-2019-free-software-conference-1

FSF statement on Microsoft joining the Open Invention Network

From October 10

Microsoft's announcements on October 4th and 10th, that it has joined
both LOT and the Open Invention Network (OIN), are significant steps
in the right direction, potentially providing respite from Microsoft's
well-known extortion of billions of dollars from free software
redistributors.

These steps, though, do not by themselves fully address the problem of
computational idea patents, or even Microsoft's specific infringement
claims. With these limitations in mind, FSF welcomes the
announcements, and calls on Microsoft to take three additional steps
to continue the momentum toward a complete resolution.

• https://www.fsf.org/news/fsf-statement-on-microsoft-joining-the-open-invention-network

Introducing our new associate member forum!

From October 15

We hope that you find this forum to be a great place to share your
experiences and perspectives surrounding free software and to forge
new bonds with the free software community. If you're a member of the
FSF, head on over to https://forum.members.fsf.org to get
started. You'll be able to log in using the Central Authentication
Service (CAS) account that you used to create your membership.

Participation in this forum is just one of many
benefits of being an FSF
member -- if you're not a member yet, we encourage you to join
today, for as little as $10 per month, or $5
per month for students.

• https://www.fsf.org/blogs/membership/introducing-our-new-associate-member-forum

DMCA exemptions granted but overall process still broken

From October 26 by Kit Walsh and Mitch Stolz

The US Library of Congress, through its subsidiary, the Copyright
Office, granted several new exemptions to Section 1201 of the Digital
Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Section 1201 makes it illegal to
circumvent the computer code that prevents copying or modifying in
most software-controlled products -- which nowadays includes everything
from refrigerators and baby monitors to tractors and smart
speakers. EFF and the FSF have fought a years-long battle against
anti-consumer DMCA abuse, since the statute on its face gives
manufacturers, tech companies, and Hollywood studios outsized control
over the products we own.

• https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-wins-dmca-exemption-petitions-tinkering-echos-and-repairing-appliances-new


• https://www.defectivebydesign.org/blog/help_fight_against_dmca_anticircumvention_rules_december_15th

Apple's new proprietary software locks will kill independent repair on new MacBook Pros

From October 4 by Jason Koebler

iFixit has found that Apple has a “kill switch” in the new MacBook
Pros. While these switches are not yet operational, when they work,
they will effectively prevent independent and third-party repair on
2018 MacBook Pro computers, according to internal Apple documents
obtained by Motherboard. This is only one of many egregious attacks
on user
freedom
committed by Apple.

• https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/yw9qk7/macbook-pro-software-locks-prevent-independent-repair

Every minute for three months, GM secretly gathered data on 90,000 drivers' radio-listening habits and locations

From October 23 by Cory Doctorow

GM tracked the choices of radio programs in its "connected" cars,
minute by minute. GM did not get users' consent, but it could have got
that easily by sneaking it into the contract that users sign for some
digital service or other. A requirement for consent is effectively no
protection.

The cars can also collect lots of other data: listening to you,
watching you, following your movements, tracking passengers' cell
phones. All such data collection should be forbidden.
But if you really want to be safe, we must make sure the car's
hardware cannot collect any of that data.

• https://boingboing.net/2018/10/23/dont-touch-that-dial.html

Thank you for participating in International Day Against DRM 2018!

From October 4

Hundreds of you around the world took action on the International Day
Against DRM (IDAD): going out into your campuses, communities, and
around the Web, and sharing your opposition to how Digital
Restrictions Management (DRM) restricts your freedom as a user of
software and media. The 17 participating organizations took their own
actions, creating videos, releasing reports, and writing
articles. Here in Boston, we visited the Apple Store and talked with
shoppers about their digital rights and how Apple devices abuse those
rights using DRM.

• https://www.defectivebydesign.org/blog/thank_you_participating_international_day_against_drm_2018

Innovative biography of RMS returns to GNU Press Shop

From October 31

After a period of unavailability, the GNU Press Shop is proud to once
again offer Free As In Freedom (2.0), the innovative biography of
Free Software Foundation founder and president Richard
M. Stallman. The original biography was written by Sam Williams in
2002, but this version is revised by Stallman himself -- while
preserving Williams's viewpoint, it includes factual corrections and
extensive new commentary by Stallman, as well as new prefaces by both
authors written for the occasion.

• https://www.fsf.org/blogs/gnu-press/innovative-biography-of-rms-returns-to-gnu-press-shop

Single-board computer guide updated: Free software is winning on ARM!

From October 18 by Alyssa Rosenzweig

The Free Software Foundation maintains a list of system-on-chip
families,
sorted by their freedom status. Free software is constantly improving,
and today, more and more boards are usable with free software. The
revised list includes much more detail than its predecessors, groups
boards by system-on-chip rather than brand name for concision,
documents previously-unidentified freedom flaws, and of course
describes progress liberating the remaining elements.

• https://www.fsf.org/blogs/sysadmin/single-board-computer-guide-updated-free-software-is-winning-on-arm


• https://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/single-board-computers

The completion of Sonali's Outreachy internship work on the Free Software Directory

From October 12 by Sonali Singhal

After much work, I finally completed the upgrade of the Free Software
Directory from the previous
long term support version of MediaWiki, 1.27, to the current one,
1.31, which was released shortly after my internship started. I also
made some general improvements, including downloading the Semantic
MediaWiki extensions using composer; removing deprecated code in
LocalSettings.php; and more.

• https://www.fsf.org/blogs/sysadmin/the-completion-of-sonalis-outreachy-internship-work-on-the-free-software-directory

GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) 6.5 released

From October 26 by the GCC Team

The GNU project and the GCC developers are pleased to announce the
release of GCC 6.5. This release is a bug-fix release, containing
fixes for regressions in GCC 6.4 relative to previous releases of GCC.

• https://gcc.gnu.org/gcc-6/

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, November 2, 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: Community Toolkit

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 Community Toolkit, which
provides information about software that can be used by nonprofits,
community groups, and individuals to advance the cause of free
software. You are invited to adopt, spread and improve this important
resource.

• https://libreplanet.org/wiki/Community_toolkit

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

GNU Spotlight with Mike Gerwitz: 8 new GNU releases!

(as of October 25, 2018):

• gama-2.01


• gcc-6.5.0


• gvpe-3.1


• help2man-1.47.8


• mes-0.18


• mtools-4.0.19


• parallel-20181022


• units-2.18

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@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 this month:

• November 10, 2018, Burgos, Spain, "Libertad de usuario, libertad del lector"


• November 12, 2018, Madrid, Spain, "¿El software que usas deniega tu libertad?"


• November 23, 2018, Madrid, Spain, "Soberania tecnológica, privacidad y democracia"

Other FSF and free software events

• November 3, 2018, Bristol, UK, John Sullivan, "How can free communication tools win?"


• November 9, 2018, Seattle, WA, SeaGL 2018


• November 9, 2018, Seattle, WA, Molly de Blanc, "Insecure Connections: Love and mental health in our digital lives"


• November 9, 2018, Seattle, WA, Rubén Rodríguez, "Freedom and privacy in the Web: Fighting licensing, tracking, fingerprinting and other issues, from both sides of the cable"


• November 23, 2018, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain, GNU Health Con 2018

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:

• Christopher Padovano


• Christopher Samuel


• Colin Carr


• John Trudeau


• René Genz


• Rich Haase


• Tom Gedra


• Trevor Spiteri

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://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/.