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Welcome to the Free Software Supporter, the Free Software
Foundation's (FSF) monthly news digest and action update -- being read
by you and 212,854 other activists. That's 1,491 more than last month!
Help defend the right to read: Stand up against DRM on October 12th
From September 5th
The FSF's Defective by Design
campaign is calling on you to stand up against Digital Restrictions
Management (DRM) on the International Day Against DRM (IDAD) on
October 12th, 2019. This year we will be focusing specifically on
everyone's right to read, particularly by urging publishers to free
students and educators from the unnecessary and cumbersome
restrictions that make their access to necessary course materials far
more difficult.
Actions we encourage you to participate in include:
1) Challenge yourself to a Day Without DRM: go a day without Netflix,
Hulu, and other DRM-restricted services to show your support of the
movement.
2) Join us here in Boston for an in-person demonstration at the
offices of Pearson Education, whose new "digital-first" textbooks
place DRM handcuffs on college students, and for a hackathon at the
FSF office, where we'll be contributing to collaborative, freely
licensed educational materials.
3) Stage your own in-person
event
to show Pearson and other offenders how you feel about DRM!
4) Join and take part in discussions on the DRM Elimination Crew
mailing
list,
where we'll be sending all of the information about this year's
campaign.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Register for FSF's licensing seminar on October 16 in Raleigh, NC
- Richard M. Stallman resigns
- Microsoft's only gone and published the exFAT spec, now supports popping it in the kernel Linux
- GNOME Foundation facing lawsuit from Rothschild Patent Imaging
- GNOME Foundation launches Coding Education Challenge
- A huge database of Facebook users’ phone numbers found online
- GNOME 3.34 released
- DRM broke its promise
- Purism starts shipping its Librem 5 phone
- Nerf unveils "DRM for darts"
- GNU Emacs logo T-shirts are back
- Introducing Craig Topham, FSF copyright and licensing associate
- How Google discovered the value of surveillance
- September GNU Emacs news
- Join the FSF and friends in updating the Free Software Directory
- LibrePlanet featured resource: Group: Defective by Design/Day Against DRM 2019
- GNU Spotlight with Mike Gerwitz: 14 new GNU releases!
- FSF and other free software events
- Thank GNUs!
- Translations of the Free Software Supporter
- Take action with the FSF!
View this issue online here:
https://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter/2019/october
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Miss an issue? You can catch up on back issues at
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Want to read this newsletter translated into another language? Scroll
to the end to read the Supporter in French, Spanish, or Portuguese.
Register for FSF's licensing seminar on October 16 in Raleigh, NC
From September 20
Early registration for the upcoming Continuing Legal Education
Seminar
(CLE) has
closed, but you can still register through Wednesday, October 9th.
The FSF Licensing and Compliance Lab
is currently finalizing the schedule for this full day seminar on GPL
Enforcement and Legal Ethics, and we will share it online soon. We
will continue to offer a discounted price to all legal professionals,
free software developers, and anyone interested in licensing and
compliance topics. Students and low income professionals will get
gratis registration.
Richard M. Stallman resigns
From September 16th
On September 16, 2019, Richard M. Stallman, founder and president of
the Free Software Foundation, resigned as president and from its board
of directors. The board will be conducting a search for a new
president, beginning immediately. Further details of the search will
be published on fsf.org. For questions, contact
FSF executive director John Sullivan at johns@fsf.org.
Microsoft's only gone and published the exFAT spec, now supports popping it in the kernel Linux
From August 28 by Tim Anderson
Microsoft has published the technical specification for exFAT, a file
system widely used for removable storage devices. exFAT stands for
Extended File Allocation Table and is widely used for things like
memory cards. It is the most recent iteration of Microsoft's FAT
series, a simple file system that is lightweight but lacks the
resiliency and security of file systems like NTFS.
This demonstrates slow but encouraging progress towards meeting the
standards we laid out in our
statement
on Microsoft joining the Open Invention Network.
GNOME Foundation facing lawsuit from Rothschild Patent Imaging
From September 25 by GNOME Foundation
The GNOME Foundation has been made aware of a lawsuit from Rothschild
Patent Imaging, LLC over patent 9,936,086. Rothschild allege that
Shotwell, a free software personal photo manager infringes this
patent. We stand with the GNOME Foundation against this unethical
attack on free software.
GNOME Foundation launches Coding Education Challenge
From August 28th by GNOME Foundation
The GNOME Foundation has announced the Coding Education Challenge, a
competition aimed to attract projects that offer educators and
students new and innovative ideas to teach coding with free
software. The $500,000 in funding will support the prizes, which will
be awarded to the teams who advance through the three stages of the
competition.
A huge database of Facebook users’ phone numbers found online
From September 5 by Zack Whittaker
TechCrunch is reporting that a Facebook database of 419 million phone
numbers has been leaked. More reason to remember that friends
shouldn't let Facebook spy on their friends! Encourage everyone you
know to wave goodbye to Mark Zuckerberg and move to free and
federated alternative social
networks.
GNOME 3.34 released
From September 12th by GNOME Foundation
The latest version of GNOME 3 was released on September 12. Version 3.34
contains six months of work by the GNOME community and includes many
improvements, performance improvements and new features.
DRM broke its promise
From September 2nd by Cory Doctorow
DRM never delivered a world of flexible consumer choice, but it was
never supposed to. Instead, twenty years on, DRM is revealed to be
exactly what we feared: an oligarchic gambit to end property ownership
for the people, who become tenants in the fields of greedy,
confiscatory tech and media companies, whose inventiveness is not
devoted to marvelous new market propositions, but, rather, to new ways
to coerce us into spending more for less.
Join us to fight back against DRM on October 12, the International
Day Against
DRM!
Purism starts shipping its Librem 5 phone
From September 9th by Cory Doctorow
Purism is a company that crowdfunds laptops and phones
whose design goal is to have no proprietary software, even at the
lowest levels. For years, the holy grail has been a competitive mobile
phone with software that respects your privacy and hardware that
respects your autonomy (user-replaceable batteries ahoy!). The Librem
5 may be that phone! We look forward to evaluating it for Respects
Your Freedom
certification.
Nerf unveils "DRM for darts"
From September 24 by Cory Doctorow
The new $50 Nerf Ultra One blaster is equipped with a Digital
Restrictions Management system that only lets it fire Hasbro-approved
darts -- if you try to save some cash by ordering third-party darts,
your foam dart gun won't work. Ridiculous! Just another way that DRM
takes away your control over the products that you buy.
GNU Emacs logo T-shirts are back
From September 27
The popular GNU Emacs logo shirts are back in stock! You may be
mistaken for a costumed hero(ine) of some kind in this
purple-on-green, which honors your dedication to everyone's favorite
extensible, customizable free text editor. The shirts are manufactured
by Bella Canvas, which is WRAP-certified, meaning they comply with
ethical, health, and safety standards in manufacturing.
Introducing Craig Topham, FSF copyright and licensing associate
From September 11th
Hello world! My name is Craig Topham, and I’m the latest to have the
honor of being a copyright and licensing associate for the FSF. I
started work in November 2018, and the delay in assembling my
introductory blog post is a testament to how busy I have
been. Although my post feels late, it gives me a chance to share my
experience here at the FSF, along with sharing a little bit more about
myself.
How Google discovered the value of surveillance
From September 24 by Shoshana Zuboff
Google's business model epitomizes one of the central problems with
nonfree software: you may not be paying them money, but you can't stop
them from using your personal information as the product. In this
excerpt from The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a
Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, we see how Google figured
out how to monetize your clicks by watching your every move. Read more
about why Google's software is malware at
https://www.gnu.org/proprietary/malware-google.html.
September GNU Emacs news
From September 23 by Sacha Chua
In these issues: An elegant way of managing dotfiles; Wakib, an easy
to use Emacs starter kit; automatically compile Emacs Lisp libraries;
and more!
Join the FSF and friends in updating the Free Software Directory
Tens of thousands of people visit https://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, October 4, from 12:00 to 15:00 EDT (16:00 to
19:00 UTC). Details here:
LibrePlanet featured resource: Group: Defective by Design/Day Against DRM 2019
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 Group: Defective by Design/Day
Against DRM 2019, which provides information about this year's
International Day Against DRM activities, happening on October 12. You
are invited to adopt, spread and improve this important resource.
Do you have a suggestion for next month's featured resource? Let us
know at campaigns@fsf.org.
We're also planning for a LibrePlanet update and redesign in the
coming month, so stay tuned!
GNU Spotlight with Mike Gerwitz: 14 new GNU releases!
14 new GNU releases in the last month (as of September 26, 2019):
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.
FSF and other free software events
- October 12, 2019, everywhere, International Day Against DRM 2019
- October 13-14, 2019, Gresik, Indonesia, GNOME.Asia Summit 2019
- October 16, 2019, Raleigh, NC, Continuing Legal Education Seminar on GPL Enforcement and Legal Ethics
- November 2, 2019, online and in Zürich, Switzerland, EmacsConf 2019
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.
This month, a big Thank GNU to:
- Adam Kraft
- Adam Van Ymeren
- Dwengo Helvetica
- Frederic Barthelemy
- Geoffrey Knauth
- Jason Self
- Justin Corwin
- Mark Wielaard
- Michael Ossmann
- Nicolas Guilbert
- Peter Rock
- René Genz
- SkySafe
- VM Brasseur
You can add your name to this list by donating at
https://donate.fsf.org/.
Translations of the Free Software Supporter
El Free Software Supporter está disponible en español. Para ver la
versión en español haz click aqui:
https://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter/2019/octubre
Para cambiar las preferencias de usuario y recibir los próximos
números del Supporter en español, haz click aquí:
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Le Free Software Supporter est disponible en français. Pour voir la
version française cliquez ici:
https://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter/2019/octobre
Pour modifier vos préférences et recevoir les prochaines
publications du Supporter en français, cliquez ici:
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O Free Software Supporter está disponível em português. Para ver a
versão em português, clique aqui:
https://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter/2019/outubro
Para alterar as preferências do usuário e receber as próximas
edições do Supporter em português, clique aqui:
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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, and more.
#
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/.
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