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https://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter/2021/january
Welcome to the Free Software Supporter, the Free Software
Foundation's (FSF) monthly news digest and action update -- being read
by you and 222,882 other activists.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- FSF fights to secure software freedom for future generations
- Register for LibrePlanet 2021 and help us to empower users
- Help us set high priorities for 2021: Send input by Jan. 8
- In-depth free software news: Read the fall Bulletin online
- IDAD 2020 sent Netflix and DRM a message
- 35 years of freedom and memories from the FSF tech team
- Freedom, memories, and campaigning for free software
- The road to software freedom is paved with licensing
- Need a last-minute gift? Gift an FSF membership!
- Share this holiday fairy tale to teach your loved ones about free software
- Replicant: A free mobile phone OS is more important than ever, and needs your help
- Update from Guix: Moving forward into 2021
- My internship with the FSF tech team and beyond
- Trying GNU Jami on laptop and phone
- Why FSF endorsing PureOS matters
- Insights on the reproducibility and future of free software with Chris Lamb
- German coronavirus tracing app available without Google services
- 2,000 parents demand major academic publisher drop Proctorio surveillance
- December GNU Emacs news
- Join the FSF and friends in updating the Free Software Directory
- LibrePlanet featured resource: Introducing free software
- GNU Spotlight with Mike Gerwitz: Nineteen new GNU releases!
- FSF and other free software events
- Thank GNUs!
- GNU copyright contributions
- Translations of the Free Software Supporter
- Take action with the FSF!
View this issue online here:
https://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter/2021/january
Encourage your friends to subscribe and help us build an audience by
adding our subscriber widget to your Web site.
Miss an issue? You can catch up on back issues at
https://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter.
Want to read this newsletter translated into another language? Scroll
to the end to read the Supporter in French, Spanish, or Portuguese.
FSF fights to secure software freedom for future generations
From December 30th
The core mission of the Free Software Foundation is, and always will
be, to support the four freedoms of free software as embodied by the
GNU Project. In 1985, when I saw Richard Stallman attempt to undertake
the task of creating for you, users and creators of software, a wholly
free GNU operating system by himself, I thought it was a noble idea
unlikely to succeed. How wrong I was! Luckily, I made the correct
decision to pitch in and help, as have many thousands of people
since. In the thirty-five years since the FSF was established,
countless free software users and supporters around the globe have
experienced the joys that come from creating software and knowing that
you have the right to learn, to tinker, to make modifications to suit
your needs, to make your own contribution, to be heard and recognized,
to share your work, and to be appreciated by your peers.
Register for LibrePlanet 2021 and help us to empower users
From December 15th
The thirteenth edition of the Free Software Foundation's annual
conference is only a few months away. We're well into the preparations
for the event, which will be held online on March 20 and 21, 2021. You
don't have to register to watch the event, and you can participate
entirely free of charge, but your registration will help us plan, so
we've added some rewards to encourage you to register at various
tiers.
Register for the LibrePlanet 2021 conference
now!
Help us set high priorities for 2021: Send input by Jan. 8
From December 22nd
The High Priority Free Software Projects (HPP) List is an initiative
from the Free Software Foundation. It draws attention to areas of
development of strategic importance to the goal of freedom for all
computer users, and highlights specific projects within these
areas. The HPP List helps guide volunteers, developers, funders, and
companies to projects where their skills and resources can be
utilized, whether they be in coding, graphic design, writing,
financial contributions, or activism.
We still need your input! Please send your suggested changes for the
HPP List to hpp-feedback@gnu.org by January 8, 2021.
In-depth free software news: Read the fall Bulletin online
From December 10th
For 35 years, the Free Software Foundation has attempted to provide
you with the best information about threats to computing freedom,
highlight the efforts of activists worldwide, and connect more people
to the struggle. One resource we produce to this end is the biannual
Free Software Foundation Bulletin,
which is printed as well as presented online – if you’ve received
yours in the mail, we encourage you to post a picture on social media
with #fsfbulletin!
Read the Free Software Foundation Bulletin
online
IDAD 2020 sent Netflix and DRM a message
From December 16th
December 4th was the Free Software Foundation and its Defective by
Design
(DBD)
campaign's fourteenth International Day Against DRM (IDAD), and we
couldn't have done it without your help. Given that we were unable to
organize in person this year, the international response of people who
digitally stood up against Digital Restrictions Management has been
nothing short of inspiring. We were able to come together for a common
goal and voice our opposition against DRM.
35 years of freedom and memories from the FSF tech team
From December 1st
The FSF turned thirty-five years old this year, and for this fall's
fundraising appeal, we took the time to do some digging into the past
to bring you some of the key moments and fun anecdotes of the FSF's
past in three parts, one focusing on collected stories centered around
each of the three major areas of work at the FSF: tech, licensing, and
campaigns. This installment is focused on the history of what has come
to be the FSF's tech team. The FSF started in 1985, and this series of
articles is by no means an attempt to create a comprehensive linear
history. Instead, I spoke to some of the former and current FSF system
administrators and asked them for memorable moments from their time
working with the FSF.
Freedom, memories, and campaigning for free software
From December 24th
This installment in our series is focused on the history of the FSF's
campaigns team. As with our article on the tech team, it is not meant
to be a comprehensive history, but is instead a collection of some
past members of the team's favorite moments, memories, and actions
from our history of spreading the message of free software.
The road to software freedom is paved with licensing
From December 9th
The Free Software Foundation’s Licensing and Compliance Lab is the
guardian of the GNU General Public License (GPL), which has brought
software freedom to the world since 1989. As stewards of the GPL and
the rest of the GNU family of licenses, we must continue our work to
protect and extend computer user freedom, but the team needs your
help.
Need a last-minute gift? Gift an FSF membership!
From December 23rd
Do you need a last-minute gift for the techie or activist in your
life? Want something that will keep on giving for the rest of the
year? Concerned about spending money on yet another dust collector or
future regift? Is "retail therapy" actually not that therapeutic for
you? Are the myriad options generating a cloud of anxiety over your
head?
Free yourself from the consumer funk and this "paradox of choice" by
opting to give your loved one a gift that will raise their social
consciousness, create more lasting cheer, and defend UserFreedom. Gift a Free Software Foundation associate membership! These also make
excellent gifts for birthdays, anniversaries, and absolutely any
occasion that would be a little more festive with a little more
freedom.
Share this holiday fairy tale to teach your loved ones about free software
From December 17th
The Free Software Foundation believes that everyone deserves this full
control over their computers and phones, and we hope this video, which
we released in 2019, helps you explain the importance of free software
to your friends and family. You can also find subtitles of
translations of the video in twelve languages in this blog
post!
Replicant: A free mobile phone OS is more important than ever, and needs your help
From December 23rd by Denis "GNUtoo" Carikli
In 2020, mobile devices such as phones and tablets (which are full
computers with powerful hardware running complete operating systems,
with applications) are an increasingly important part in our
computing. Hence, they are particularly subject to freedom and
security concerns. So-called smartphones present a number of freedom,
privacy, security, ecological, and social justice issues in a
relatively small device.
Replicant addresses these issues by enabling people to run fully free
operating systems on supported mobile devices. You can read more about
the freedom, privacy, and security issues that Replicant addresses on
the Replicant Web site. The site and wiki also give further
information about Replicant, the devices it supports, installation
instructions, the latest info about its limitations, and more.
Update from Guix: Moving forward into 2021
From December 28th by Maxim Cournoyer
In the two years following the last Guix fundraising campaign, the
project has made great advances through thousands of commits and
hundreds of contributors. There are now more than 15,000 packages in
the collection, almost doubling the number reported two years ago. The
continuous integration build farm (the automatic and continuous
building of the source and binary packages in Guix for continuous
integration, testing, and analyses to make sure the system is 100%
reproducible) is also in better shape, although more work is being
done to improve its performance.
My internship with the FSF tech team and beyond
From December 18th
Hello! I'm Amin Bandali, and this is my second blog post on the FSF
sysadmin blog, concluding my internship with the FSF tech team this
year.
Throughout my internship with the tech team, I have worked mainly on
sysadmin tasks related to setting up and/or managing FSF's GNU/Linux
servers. Perhaps most significantly, I set up an instance of the
Sourcehut forge software to help evaluate it as a candidate for the
upcoming FSF forge project. I documented the installation and setup
process of Sourcehut's various components in the form of a literate
GNU Emacs Org-mode file, where source blocks are interspersed with
comments and prose explaining them. One can then progressively
evaluate and execute the source blocks, and optionally have their
results stored back in the Org file itself to help with
documentation/demonstration.
Trying GNU Jami on laptop and phone
From December 29th by Ade Malsasa Akbar
Trisquel is a fully free computer operating system while Jami is a
complete cross platform communication app. Following the release of
the latest OS version 9 codenamed Etiona, and the latest version of
the communication app codenamed Together, now I want to explain my
experiments with Jami by using my laptop and phone altogether. The
results are it works with calls, for both usual audio and also video;
can do two ways of share screen; text chats and file sharing also
works, with some important notes. Thanks to Trisquel developers, now
using Jami is much more easier than ever. Now let's go chatting!
Why FSF endorsing PureOS matters
From December 22nd by Purism
It was three years ago today, December 21, 2017, that the Free
Software Foundation announced it had endorsed PureOS. Getting FSF
endorsement is not an easy task and involves a lot of rigorous
evaluation. Sometimes people ask us why we decided to create and
maintain PureOS instead of using an existing distribution such as
Debian (which PureOS is based on). After all, it’s a lot of extra work
to maintain your own distribution, and even more work to maintain one
that qualifies for FSF endorsement. In this article we will discuss
why we consistently choose the harder road and why PureOS being
endorsed by the FSF benefits your freedom, your privacy and your
security (in particular supply chain security).
Insights on the reproducibility and future of free software with Chris Lamb
From December 21st by Vladimir Bejdo
The Reproducible Builds project seeks to integrate a set of
development practices into software which emphasize build
reproducibility, or the ability to ensure that a given build process
will lead to verifiably integrous binaries which correspond to their
source code. Reproducibility is especially important in software that
is used for sensitive applications or even by users living in
repressive regimes under mortal danger -- repressive governments, for
example, may choose to introduce vulnerabilities into software used by
dissidents to connect to the Internet by targeting pre-compiled
binaries and build processes rather than source code. The project is
working towards making many widely used pieces of free software
reproducible, from its aims towards making (at the very least the
packages of) several widely used distributions of GNU/Linux
reproducible to achieving reproducibility for individual pieces of
critical software like Tor and Tails.
German coronavirus tracing app available without Google services
From December 8th by Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE)
A handful of free software developers have achieved what official
bodies have been missing for months: they have made the German Corona
Warn App for tracing COVID-19 risk contacts available in a version
that is completely free of dependencies on Google and available in
F-Droid, the free software app store.
2,000 parents demand major academic publisher drop Proctorio surveillance
From December 21st by Edward Ongweso Jr.
This month, digital rights group Fight for the Future unveiled an open
letter signed by 2,000 parents calling on McGraw-Hill Publishing to
end its relationship with Proctorio, one of many proctoring apps that
digital rights groups have correctly called "indistinguishable from
spyware.” As we have stated before, no student should have to trade
their freedom for an
education.
December GNU Emacs news
From December 30th by Sacha Chua
In these issues: Emacs virtual Berlin meetup, Emacs from Scratch,
Favorite Emacs Packages, Semantic Clojure Formatting, and more!
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 8th, from 12pm to 3pm EST (16:00
to 19:00 UTC). Details here:
LibrePlanet featured resource: Introducing free software
Every month on the LibrePlanet
wiki, we highlight one
resource that is interesting and useful -- often one that could use
your help.
For this month, we are highlighting Introducing Free Software, which
gathers suggestions for an introductory free software site for people
who are complete newcomers to the concept. 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.
GNU Spotlight with Mike Gerwitz: Nineteen new GNU releases!
19 new GNU releases in the last month (as of December 30, 2020):
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.
FSF and other free software events
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:
- Antonio Carzaniga
- Blair Vidakovich
- David Turner
- Dock Williams
- Dominic Walden
- Donald Craig
- Hannah Wolfman-Jones
- Iñaki Arenaza
- Jane Doe
- Jean-Francois Blavier
- Jesse Young
- Joe McLaughlin
- Keonne Rodriguez
- Marcus Marinelli
- Marcus Pemer
- Mark Boenke
- Michael Cornelius
- Michael Lewis
- Morten Lind
- Nicodemus Paradiso
- Nicolas Avrutin
- Peter Kunze
- René Genz
- Roland Pesch
- Stephen Longfield
- Steve Tuyizere
- Steve Wickert
- Svante Stenberg
- Thomas Saglio
- Yuchen Pei
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 GNU GPL and keep software free. The following individuals
have assigned their copyright to the FSF (and allowed public
appreciation) in the past month:
- Alvaro Gonzalez Sotillo (Emacs)
- Ashutosh Pandey (glibc)
- Kirill Okhotnikov (glibc)
- Levin Du (Emacs)
- OU YANG SHIH TING (Emacs)
- Pankaj Jangid (Emacs)
- Paul Fee (GCC)
- Wook Rae Kim (GDB)
Want to see your name on this list? Contribute to GNU and assign your
copyright to the FSF.
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/2021/enero
Para cambiar las preferencias de usuario y recibir los próximos
números del Supporter en español, haz click aquí:
https://my.fsf.org/civicrm/profile/create?reset=1&gid=34&id=59606&cs=c34a03eaf3065b0e11e4a348d0ee7cc0_1609828299_168
Le Free Software Supporter est disponible en français. Pour voir la
version française cliquez ici:
https://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter/2021/janvier
Pour modifier vos préférences et recevoir les prochaines
publications du Supporter en français, cliquez ici:
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