Welcome to the Free Software Supporter, the Free Software Foundation's
(FSF) monthly news digest and action update -- being read by you and
205,453 other activists. That's 1,271 more than last month!

GNU GPLv3 at the center of the black hole image

From April 13 by Swapnil Bhartiya

The black hole image that made big news at the beginning of this month
was created using software to virtually network and operate physical
telescopes and combine them into "a telescope as big as Earth." Two
out of the three imaging software libraries used have source code
released under GNU GPL v3. This is a major victory for free software!

• https://www.tfir.io/gnu-gplv3-at-the-heart-of-black-hole-image


• https://github.com/achael/eht-imaging

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• LibrePlanet 2019 wrap-up: Building the free software utopia


• The US House just passed a bill to bring back net neutrality


• Software Heritage and GNU Guix join forces to enable long term reproducibility


• EFF’s tweet about an overzealous DMCA takedown is now subject to an overzealous takedown


• GNU Radio Conference: September 16-20


• GUADEC 2019 call for papers


• GNU Tools Cauldron 2019


• Designing posters with Krita, Scribus, and Inkscape


• Microsoft announces it will shut down ebook program and confiscate its customers' libraries


• VMware announces plans to remove non-complying code, Hellwig decides not to appeal


• Pearson and Google partner to steal the minds of children


• GNUnet 0.11.1 released


• The Free Software Directory needs you! IRC meetups every Friday


• Volunteers needed! Help update "Introduction to the command line" manual


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


• LibrePlanet featured resource: GPG guide


• GNU Spotlight with Mike Gerwitz: 15 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!

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LibrePlanet 2019 wrap-up: Building the free software utopia

From April 8

Every year, the LibrePlanet
conference brings together many
members of the free software movement to celebrate our achievements,
strategize how to deal with our setbacks, show off new ideas, and
decide what new frontiers we will trailblaze together next. The 2019
conference included many introductions to, and updates from, new and
familiar projects, discussions on copyleft and security, and
explorations of free software in the business world, but one
compelling theme was woven through both days of the conference: how do
we maintain and increase the health of our all-important community?

• https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/libreplanet-2019-wrap-up-building-the-free-software-utopia

The US House just passed a bill to bring back net neutrality

From April 10 by April Glaser

The fight to bring net neutrality back from the dead got a major, if
perhaps symbolic, boost this month. US House lawmakers passed the Save
the Internet Act, a Democrat-backed bill that would prohibit companies
like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T from slowing down, blocking, or
charging Web sites to reach users at faster speeds, with a vote of 232
to 190. The act would restore the Obama-era net neutrality rules that
Trump’s Federal Communications Commission repealed in 2017.

• https://slate.com/technology/2019/04/net-neutrality-house-save-internet-act-senate.html

Software Heritage and GNU Guix join forces to enable long term reproducibility

From April 18 by Software Heritage

Software Heritage enables long term access to software source code,
enabling users to retrieve it even if it disappers from the platform
where they are used to find it, or, worse, when the platform itself
goes away. On April 18, Software Heritage announced the first results
of a collaboration with GNU Guix, which is a stepping stone for long
term reproducibility of research software.

• https://www.softwareheritage.org/2019/04/18/software-heritage-and-gnu-guix-join-forces-to-enable-long-term-reproducibility/

EFF’s tweet about an overzealous DMCA takedown is now subject to an overzealous takedown

From April 14 by Katharine Trendacosta

A TV production company made Twitter delete a tweet pointing at an
article about a leak of unreleased TV shows. Then the Electronic
Frontier Foundation (EFF) tweeted about those events, and the arrogant
production company made Twitter take that down too.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) permits victims to contest
the claim, but even if they do so, the censored work must remain
deleted for 10 days. Thus, the system rewards false claims by crowning
them with efficacy.

• https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/04/effs-tweet-about-overzealous-dmca-takedown-now-subject-overzealous-takedown

GNU Radio Conference: September 16-20

From April 17

Registration is now open for GNU Radio Conference 2019! GRCon will be
held September 16-20 in Huntsville, AL, and the call for papers is
open through July 1. GNU Radio is fiscally sponsored by the
FSF.

• https://www.gnuradio.org/grcon/grcon19/

GUADEC 2019 call for papers

From April 12 by GNOME Project

GUADEC, the GNOME User and Developer European Conference, is GNOME’s
main annual conference. This year it is being held in Thessaloniki,
Greece from August 23-28.

This is a great opportunity to share your ideas with the GNOME
project, as well as the wider free software community. You don’t have
to be an existing member of the GNOME project to submit a talk: if you
have something interesting to say about software or technology, they
want to hear from you! If you’re brand new to speaking, this is also a
great opportunity to get started on your public speaking career --
they welcome newcomers and provide a friendly audience.

• https://www.gnome.org/news/2019/04/guadec-2019-call-for-papers/

GNU Tools Cauldron 2019

From April 15 by GCC

We are pleased to announce another gathering of GNU tools
developers. The purpose of this workshop is to gather all GNU tools
developers, discuss current/future work, coordinate efforts, exchange
reports on ongoing efforts, discuss development plans for the next 12
months, developer tutorials and any other related discussions. This
year, the GNU Tools Cauldron crosses the Atlantic Ocean and lands in
Montréal, Canada. Every developer working in the GNU Toolchain is
invited: GCC, GDB, binutils, runtimes, etc.

• https://gcc.gnu.org/wiki/cauldron2019

Designing posters with Krita, Scribus, and Inkscape

From April 12 by Raghavendra Kamath

A few months ago, I was asked to design some posters for a local FSF
event. Richard M. Stallman was visiting our country, and my friend
Abhas Abhinav wanted to put up some posters and banners to promote his
visit. I designed two posters for RMS's talk in Bangalore.

I create my artwork with free software tools. Although many artists
successfully use free software to create artwork, I repeatedly
encounter comments in discussion forums claiming that free software is
not made for creative work. This article is my effort to detail the
process I typically use to create my artwork and to spread awareness
that one can do professional work with the help of free software
tools.

• https://raghukamath.com/journal/designing-posters-with-free-software

Microsoft announces it will shut down ebook program and confiscate its customers' libraries

From April 2 by Cory Doctorow

Microsoft is shutting down their ebook store, which features books
locked down with Digital Restrictions Management (DRM), and taking
away every book that every one of its customers acquired effective
July 1. DRM ebooks are never safe! Learn more about our fight against
DRM at Defective by Design.

• https://boingboing.net/2019/04/02/burning-libraries.html

VMware announces plans to remove non-complying code, Hellwig decides not to appeal

From April 2 by Software Freedom Conservancy

At the beginning of April, Christoph Hellwig announced the conclusion
of his case against VMware in Germany. The Hamburg Higher Regional
Court affirmed the lower court's decision, which dismissed the case on
purely procedural grounds; they did not address the main question of
the case. (The February 28th decision can be found
here.)
Hellwig has decided with his legal counsel, Till Jaeger, and after
conferring with Conservancy, to not appeal the case further in German
courts.

VMware, in their news item about the decision by the Court, announced
that they will finally remove vmklinux from vSphere. Both Hellwig and
Conservancy had asked VMware to remove the GNU/Linux code from
VMware's proprietary kernel many times. While the preferred form of
GPL compliance is release of the entire work under the terms of the
GPL, a common alternative is to merely remove the GPL'd code from the
product. VMware chose the latter method to comply.

• https://sfconservancy.org/news/2019/apr/02/vmware-no-appeal/

Pearson and Google partner to steal the minds of children

From March 25 by Alan Singer

The price of access to thousands of "interactive learning resources
and assignments" to give kids a chance to take practice tests that
will equip them to do better on high-stakes standardized tests:
exposure to malicious spyware.

• https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/3/25/1844909/-Pearson-and-Google-Partner-to-Steal-the-Minds-of-Children

GNUnet 0.11.1 released

From April 3 by GNUnet

We are pleased to announce the release of GNUnet 0.11.1.

This is a bugfix release for 0.11.0, mostly fixing minor bugs,
improving documentation and fixing various build issues. In terms of
usability, users should be aware that there are still a large number
of known open issues in particular with respect to ease of use, but
also some critical privacy issues especially for mobile users. Also,
the nascent network is tiny (about 200 peers) and thus unlikely to
provide good anonymity or extensive amounts of interesting
information. As a result, the 0.11.1 release is still only suitable
for early adopters with some reasonable pain tolerance.

• https://gnunet.org/en/#gnunet-0.11.1-release

The Free Software Directory needs you! IRC meetups every Friday

From April 23

The Free Software
Directory is an essential
catalog of free software online. The Directory is maintained by
countless volunteers dedicated to the promotion of software that
respects your personal liberty. As with any group composed of
volunteers, the informal Directory team has people who come and go,
and right now, it could really use some fresh new members to kick our
efforts into high gear.

• https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/the-free-software-directory-needs-you-irc-meetups-every-friday

Volunteers needed! Help update "Introduction to the command line" manual

From April 18

This popular and highly praised
manual to
the command line was written in a sprint in 2009 by the FSF. We're
currently seeking volunteers to help update it. If you are interested
in contributing or would like to know more, please get in touch with
Andy Oram at andyo@praxagora.com. Andy has generously volunteered
his time to edit the book and coordinate the project.

• https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/volunteers-needed-help-update-introduction-to-the-command-line-manual

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, May 3 from 12pm to 3pm EDT (16:00 to 19:00
UTC). Details here:

• https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Main_Page

LibrePlanet featured resource: GPG guide

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 GPG guide, which provides
information about the Email Self-Defense Guide. You are invited to
adopt, spread and improve this important resource.

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

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

GNU Spotlight with Mike Gerwitz: 15 new GNU releases!

15 new GNU releases in the last month (as of April 25, 2019):

• dico-2.9


• emacs-26.2


• gama-2.04


• gawk-5.0.0


• gnuastro-0.9


• gnuhealth-client-3.4.4


• gnunet-0.11.3


• gnupg-2.2.15


• gnutls-3.6.7


• libcdio-2.1.0


• nano-4.2


• parallel-20190422


• rush-1.9


• shepherd-0.6.0


• wget-1.20.3

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.

This month, we welcome Tom Tromey as comaintainer of src-hilight and
Abhilash Raj as comaintainer of Mailman.

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:

• May 6, 2019, Aalborg, Denmark, "Free software and your freedom"


• May 7, 2019, Odense, Denmark, "The dangers of mass surveillance"


• May 8, 2019, Copenhagen, Denmark, "Free software and your freedom in computing"


• May 9, 2019, Copenhagen, Denmark, "Computing, freedom, and privacy"


• May 10, 2019, Copenhagen, Denmark, "Copyright vs Community"


• May 13, 2019, Lausanne, Switzerland, "Computing, freedom, and privacy"


• May 14, 2019, Zurich, Switzerland, "Free software: Ethics and freedom in a digital age"


• May 15, 2019, Biel/Bienne, Switzerland, "Title TBA"

Other FSF and free software events

• August 23-28, Thessaloniki, Greece, GUADEC, the GNOME User and Developer European Conference


• September 16-20, Huntsville, AL, USA, GNU Radio Conference 2019 (GRCon)

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/2019supporters.html

This month, a big Thank GNU to:

• Bo Morgan


• Charlie Ebert


• Donald and Jill Knuth


• Donnie Pennington


• Edward Flick


• François Badier


• John Giese


• Michael Dinolfo


• Ricardo Pinninghoff

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:

• Dario Gjorgjevski (Emacs)


• Konstantin Kharlamov (Emacs, glibc)


• Kumar Mallikarjuna (Wget)


• Yuhei Kikuchi (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/.