Welcome to the Free Software Supporter, the Free Software
Foundation's (FSF) monthly news digest and action update -- being read
by you and 195,394 other activists. That's 455 more than last month!
And, an extra-special welcome to the 488 new members who joined us
during our winter fundraiser! Thanks to all of you for making it such
a success and putting us in a position to successfully take on the
challenges to user freedom in 2019.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Free Software Foundation receives $1 million from Handshake


• FSF adds Hyperbola GNU/Linux-libre to list of endorsed GNU/Linux distributions


• Register today for LibrePlanet 2019!


• Small victories matter: The year in free software


• Some losses from 2018


• A message from Richard M. Stallman


• FSF Licensing and Compliance Lab: 2018 and the future


• New frontiers in freedom for a new year


• Forging a DRM-free future with Defective by Design


• 2018 DMCA anti-circumvention exemption process: Some progress, but not enough


• Support software freedom: Shop the GNU Press


• Support GNU Guix!


• Visit the Libre Lounge, a new podcast by free software supporters


• UK police tested facial recognition on holiday shoppers in London


• Introducing Hrishikesh Barman, intern with the FSF tech team


• Introducing Lei Zhao, intern with the FSF tech team


• On ghost users and messaging backdoors


• MPEG-G: The ugly


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


• LibrePlanet featured resource: Incoming distros


• GNU Spotlight with Mike Gerwitz: 21 new GNU releases!


• GNU Toolchain update: Support GNU Toolchain


• Richard Stallman's speaking schedule and other FSF events


• Thank GNUs!


• GNU copyright contributions


• Take action with the FSF!

View this issue online here: https://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter/2019/january

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Free Software Foundation receives $1 million from Handshake

From December 3

The FSF announced it has received several earmarked charitable
donations from Handshake, an organization developing an experimental
peer-to-peer root domain naming system, totaling $1 million. These
gifts will support the FSF's organizational capacity, including its
advocacy, education, and licensing initiatives, as well as specific
projects fiscally sponsored by the FSF.

However, the support of our associate members and donors in the
community is still indispensable. Associate members provide the most
long-term, stable financial support for the FSF. If you're not a a
member yet, join today!

• https://www.fsf.org/news/free-software-foundation-receives-1-million-from-handshake

FSF adds Hyperbola GNU/Linux-libre to list of endorsed GNU/Linux distributions

From December 6

The FSF's list
showcases GNU/Linux operating system distributions whose developers
have made a commitment to follow its Guidelines for Free System
Distributions. Each
one includes and endorses exclusively free "as in freedom"
software. After a thorough vetting process, the FSF concluded that
Hyperbola, a long-term support
simplicity-focused distribution based on Arch GNU/Linux, meets these
criteria.

• https://www.fsf.org/news/fsf-adds-hyperbola-gnu-linux-libre-to-list-of-endorsed-gnu-linux-distributions

Register today for LibrePlanet 2019!

From December 4

LibrePlanet 2019 is only three months
away, on March 23-24, here in the Greater Boston area. We’re already
in high gear here at the FSF: we’ve secured four amazing keynote
speakers, and we’re hard at work putting together an exciting
schedule.

• https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/register-today-for-libreplanet-2019-1

Small victories matter: The year in free software

From December 24

The free software wins for 2018 haven’t made big headlines, but they
reflect some important trends: greater public awareness of the
importance of controlling the technology we use, and greater awareness
of how to fight back. The FSF works hard every day for wins like
these, and in this article, we're sharing some of the progress the
digital rights community has made.

• https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/small-victories-matter-the-year-in-free-software

Some losses from 2018

From December 24

The work we need to do for freedom is far from over. I want to
highlight just a few of the (many) losses from 2018. I think these
make it clear why the work of organizations like the FSF is so
important. The FSF sets a hard line for freedom -- uncompromising in
our ideology and bringing it to everything we do. I look at this list
and am reminded why the FSF exists, why we need to keep fighting, and
why we can only succeed by rallying as a community.

• https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/some-losses-from-2018

A message from Richard M. Stallman

From December 30

This year's surprise one-time donations make it possible for us to
hire additional staff and do more work, but we can't coast very long
on them alone; we will need to continue paying the staff to keep doing
the work. Most of our income, these donations aside, comes from
individual donors giving less than $200 a year. To carry on with this
work, we need your support. The
increased operations, as we are planning them now, will still not do
all that needs to be done to win freedom in computing. You can enable
us to continue -- and to undertake the other work that we are still
not doing -- by joining the Free Software Foundation or donating
now. Even better, do both!

• https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/a-message-from-richard-m-stallman

FSF Licensing and Compliance Lab: 2018 and the future

From December 12

The FSF Licensing and Compliance Lab handles all the free software
licensing work for the FSF. Copyleft is the best legal tool we have
for protecting the rights of users, and the Lab makes sure that tool
is at full power by providing fundamental licensing education. From
publishing articles and resources on free software licensing, to doing
license compliance work for the GNU Project, to handling our
certification programs like Respects Your Freedom, if there is a
license involved, the Lab is on the case.

• https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/fsf-licensing-compliance-lab-2018-and-the-future

New frontiers in freedom for a new year

From December 26

In order to create the free world we need, free software must become a
"kitchen table" issue. Making that happen is a large part of the FSF’s
mission, and it takes the everyday advocacy and hard work of a huge
community of supporters to make it possible. It also takes funds for
campaigns, software development, and more -- freedom isn’t always
gratis, unfortunately.

• https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/new-frontiers-in-freedom-for-a-new-year-1

Forging a DRM-free future with Defective by Design

From December 19

The state of Digital Restrictions Management
(DRM)
is as bad as ever -- restricting your rights every day, whether you
realize it or not. Intentionally or unintentionally, you are caught by
these digital handcuffs. Looking back on 2018, we see new themes
around DRM, largely concerning access: Apple created a new chip to
limit repairs of Apple products; Amazon released their SPEKE API
making it even easier to include DRM on Amazon Web Services servers;
and we saw a year with Encrypted Media Extensions on the Web. These
are just a few of the new ways DRM infiltrated our lives in 2018.

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

2018 DMCA anti-circumvention exemption process: Some progress, but not enough

From December 18

The anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright
Act (DMCA) are still a threat. The latest round of its exemptions
process showed some successes, and where the work needs to continue.

• https://www.defectivebydesign.org/blog/2018_dmca_anticircumvention_exemption_process_some_progress_not_enough

Support software freedom: Shop the GNU Press

From December 5

This winter is a great time to visit the GNU Press Shop, the online
store that promotes software freedom with every T-shirt, every button,
and every two socks. We are always busy improving and expanding our
selection of documentation, cool stickers, and garments as attractive
as they are useful. There can be little doubt that every hacker,
coder, and software freedom enthusiast you know devoutly wishes for a
gift from the GNU Press Shop to help them upgrade their skills and
spread the word about software freedom far, wide, and often. In case
you haven't visited since last year, here's what's brand new in 2018!

• https://www.fsf.org/blogs/gnu-press/support-software-freedom-shop-the-gnu-press

Support GNU Guix!

From December 18

A little over six years ago, the GNU Guix project was announced. Since
that first email, the project and the community gathering around Guix
have grown steadily. Around 265 people have collectively contributed
tens of thousands of commits to the project. In the past year alone,
we have received close to 11,000 commits. More than 8,700 packages are
now available, and Guix is supported on five different CPU
architectures. Guix has made inroads in the field of scientific
computing, and we have been able to secure institutional support for
parts of our build farm providing binary substitutes to users.

Help us bring Guix to its full potential by donating
here. We
appreciate any size donation you can make!

• https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/support-gnu-guix

Visit the Libre Lounge, a new podcast by free software supporters

From November 20 by Chris Webber and Serge Wroclawski

Libre Lounge is a podcast by Chris Webber, co-editor of ActivityPub
and co-founder of GNU MediaGoblin, and Serge Wroclawski, hacker and
free culture advocate. They'll be discussing software freedom, free
culture, digital privacy, and other topics, in a relaxed, fun
format. The episodes so far address corporate control of free
software, malware in free software, the roots and future of hacker
culture, and more.

• https://librelounge.org/

UK police tested facial recognition on holiday shoppers in London

From December 18 by James Vincent

The Orwellian nightmare begins: despite warnings of high error rates
(as though this technology would be okay if it worked!), the London
Metropolitan Police tested out facial recognition technology on
holiday shoppers this December. Cameras are fixed to lampposts or
deployed on vans, and use proprietary software developed by Japanese
firm NEC to measure the structure of passing faces. This scan is then
compared to a database of police mugshots. The Metropolitan Police say
a match via the software will prompt officers to examine the
individual and decide whether or not to stop them. Big Brother
Watch
has described the justification for using facial recognition as
“misleading, incompetent, and authoritarian.”

• https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/18/18146083/facial-recognition-police-london-uk-met-christmas-shopping

Introducing Hrishikesh Barman, intern with the FSF tech team

From December 5

As a remote tech intern, I will be researching monitoring systems,
alerting systems, and LibreJS. The main way of communication with the
team so far is through IRC and emails. In my first week of the
internship, and as an initial task, I was asked to write this blog
post and start learning related technologies so as to draft my work
plan. The monitoring and alerting system project is about making fewer
alerts for issues that aren't important, and more alerts for issues
that are more important. The FSF runs over 100 virtual machines and a
dozen servers. It will be very interesting and informative to learn
about the current setup of Nagios and Munin at the FSF, and explore
Prometheus. This will enable the tech team to have better insights
into the software they run and the hardware it runs on.

• https://www.fsf.org/blogs/sysadmin/introducing-hrishikesh-barman-intern-with-the-fsf-tech-team

Introducing Lei Zhao, intern with the FSF tech team

From December 4

I first became aware of free software in the sense of freedom at the
age of 19. I encountered free software even earlier, but it took some
time to appreciate the free/libre aspect of free software. I learned
my first programming language, Pascal, in high school. Then Python,
Java, C/C++, Scala, JavaScript, SQL, and Lisp. The language I've used
most often is Python, since it is the language I used for my past
jobs. My primary editor is Emacs. I'm working on making changes to
GitLab to improve the license selection for new projects.

• https://www.fsf.org/blogs/sysadmin/introducing-lei-zhao-intern-with-the-fsf-tech-team

On ghost users and messaging backdoors

From December 17 by Matthew Green

The past few years have been an amazing time for the deployment of
encryption. In ten years, encrypted Web connections have gone from a
novelty into a requirement for running a modern Web site. Smartphone
manufacturers deployed default storage encryption to billions of
phones. End-to-end encrypted messaging and phone calls are now
deployed to billions of users. While this progress is exciting to
cryptographers and privacy advocates, not everyone sees it this way. A
few countries, like the UK.and Australia, have passed laws in an
attempt to gain access to this data, and at least one US proposal has
made it to Congress. The Department of Justice recently added its own
branding to the mix, asking tech companies to deploy “responsible
encryption.“ What, exactly, is “responsible encryption”? Well, that’s
a bit of a problem.

• https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2018/12/17/on-ghost-users-and-messaging-backdoors/

MPEG-G: The ugly

From September 28 by James Bonfield

MPEG is developing a new format for genomic data, which will be
patented, and thus probably off-limits in the free world for 20
years. The author thinks that some computational-idea patents might be
legitimate. The reasons they are all
harmful
is that they create a form of gridlock -- and that they usually
exclude free software, since the developer must pay a license fee per
user. We should protect the entire software field from the threat of
patents. This is not to say that we're in opposition to profiting from
software, so long as it respects user freedom; however, nothing can
justify a program that takes away freedom from whoever uses it.

• https://datageekdom.blogspot.com/2018/09/

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, January 4, from 12pm to 3pm EST (16:00 to
19:00 UTC). Details here:

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

LibrePlanet featured resource: Incoming distros

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 Incoming distros, which provides
information about the process of reviewing and approving a
distribution for the Free GNU/Linux distribution
list. You are
invited to adopt, spread and improve this important resource.

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

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

GNU Spotlight with Mike Gerwitz: 21 new GNU releases!

21 new GNU releases in the last month (as of December 25, 2018):

• bison-3.2.4


• datamash-1.4


• gama-2.02


• gcc-7.4.0


• gdb-8.2.1


• global-6.6.3


• gnun-0.12


• gnupg-2.2.12


• grep-3.3


• groff-1.22.4


• guix-0.16.0


• libmicrohttpd-0.9.62


• libredwg-0.7


• linux-libre-4.20-gnu


• mes-0.19


• mtools-4.0.23


• nettle-3.4.1


• parallel-20181222


• sed-4.7


• unifont-11.0.03


• wget-1.20

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 coming up:

• January 15, 2019, Thiruvananthapuram, India, "Title TBA"


• January 16, 2019, Thiruvananthapuram, India, "Title TBA"


• January 18, 2019, Bengaluru, India, "Title TBA"


• February 7, 2019, Toronto, Canada, "Free software: Your freedom in computing"

Other FSF and free software events

• February 2, 2019, Brussels, Belgium, John Sullivan, "Who wants you to think nobody uses the AGPL and why"

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:

• Arcanite Solutions


• Bashar Al-Abdulhadi


• Bdale Garbee


• Ben Sturmfels


• Brewster Kahle


• Clifford Ireland


• David Turner


• Faran Jessani


• Ganesan Srinivasan


• Guus Sliepen


• hiroo yamagata


• Jean-Francois Blavier


• Jelte van der Hoek


• Julian Graham


• Marcus Pemer


• Mark Boenke


• Markus Fischer


• Morten Lind


• Nikolay Ksenev


• Nobias TaniaAhuja


• Patrick Kennedy


• Peter Kunze


• raphael tremeaud


• René Genz


• Russell McManus


• Shyama Mandal


• Simon Josefsson


• Steve Wickert


• Terence O'Gorman


• Thomas Saglio


• Warren Knight

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:

• Ampere Computing LLC (GCC) (glibc)


• Clemens Radermacher (Emacs)


• Damien Zammit (Mach) (Hurd) (GRUB) (glibc)


• Denis Pruchkovsky (LibreDWG)


• Edmund Kademan (Emacs)


• Iku Iwasa (Emacs)


• Jacob Bachmeyer (DejaGnu)


• John Zaitseff (glibc) (Gnulib)


• Joseph Mingrone (Emacs)


• Mauro Osvaldo Aranda (Emacs)


• Nicholas Drozd (Emacs)


• Nicholas Krause (GCC)


• Noah Peart (Emacs)


• Rodney Allen Sparapani (Emacs)


• Romain Naour (GCC) (glibc) (GDB) (Binutils)


• Tom Honermann (GCC) (glibc)


• William James Christie Ferguson (Emacs)

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 © 2019 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/.