Welcome to the Free Software Supporter, the Free Software
Foundation's (FSF) monthly news digest and action update -- being read
by you and 231,914 other activists. That's twenty-four more than last
month!
Call for sessions for LibrePlanet 2024: Cultivating Community now open
From September 5
The call for sessions for LibrePlanet 2024: Cultivating Community, the
sixteenth edition of the FSF's conference on ethical technology and
user freedom, is open.
Submit your session today and join us for fun talks about free
software, as well as discussions and workshops. We look forward to
reading your session proposals. Also, if you need help with your
session proposal, or if you would like to just socialize, please come
meet with us in our LibrePlanet hour on IRC.
Submissions are being accepted through Wednesday, October 25, 12:00
EDT (16:00 UTC).
Want to read this newsletter translated into another language? Scroll
to the end to read the Supporter in French, Spanish, or Portuguese.
FSF celebrates forty years of GNU with a hackday for families, hackers, and hackers-to-be
From September 27
On September 27, 1983, Richard M. Stallman announced the development
of the GNU operating system and thereby initiated the global free
software movement. Today, the GNU operating system is entirely
composed of free software, i.e. it gives the user the freedom to use,
study, modify, and share it. GNU, usually combined with the kernel
Linux, enables millions of people everyday around the world --
including entire governments -- to operate their computers in freedom.
In honor of this milestone, celebrations were held in Biel/Bienne,
Switzerland on September 27 and at the FSF's headquarters in Boston,
MA, USA on October 1. We encourage you to read about our history as
well as to check out and share #GNU40 tagged microblog posts.
Free Software Awards: Nominate those who inspire you by Nov 21
From September 26
There's no better way to show a member of the free software community
that you appreciate their efforts to cultivate the free software
movement than by nominating them to the Free Software Awards. Whether
you're a deeply entrenched member of that community yourself or a
newcomer to the movement, you can take the time today to show that you
appreciate one particular member or project's commitment to the ideals
of software freedom. By nominating someone, you send the message that
you appreciate their vital work.
Nominate someone today. The deadline for nominations is November 21 at
23:59 EST (04:59 UTC).
On September 27 in Biel/Bienne, Switzerland, and again on October 1 in
Boston, MA, USA, the FSF celebrated the fortieth anniversary of the
GNU operating system and the launch of the free software
movement. Free software advocates, tinkerers, and hackers all over the
world celebrated at these events, which marked an important milestone
in the history of computing. Forty years later, GNU and free software
are even more relevant. Photos and videos from this special GNU
Hackers' Meeting in Switzerland are now available on the GNU website.
The FSF, a Massachusetts 501(c)(3) charity with a worldwide mission to
protect and promote computer-user freedom, seeks a motivated and
organized Boston-based individual to be our full-time operations
assistant.
This is a great opportunity for a team-oriented self-starter who
thrives on multitasking, is calm under pressure, has an eye for
detail, and wants to make a difference.
An audacious plan to halt the Internet's enshittification by Cory Doctorow at DEF CON 31
From September 15
Cory Doctorow recently gave a keynote at DEF CON 31 that touched upon
many topics pertinent to software freedom. In this talk, he details
the trajectory of typical proprietary platforms: "First, platforms are
good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better
for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business
customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die."
He offers solutions, such as requiring interoperability and
standards-based designs, which would at least allow for people to
leave proprietary platforms for free platforms while maintaining
communication with the same people (similar to how a person may switch
their phone services from one carrier to another). We found the talk
to be persuasive and insightful, and wanted to share it with you.
French translation of the manifesto "Free children from the digital stranglehold!"
Ongoing petition by Educode
Late last month, we received word about a French translation of the
manifesto "Free children from the digital stranglehold!"
Of these documents, which advocate for free software in the classroom,
Educode tells us the following:
The manifesto was produced by Educode, an association based in
Belgium. While the draft manifesto is indeed strongly inspired by
the Dutch [initiative**], as it is essentially based on a French
translation of the Dutch manifesto, it is totally independent of it.
The campaign to promote and collect signatures for the French
version is scheduled to run throughout the coming school year,
i.e. the 23-24 academic year.
And while the Dutch petition closes on 2023-10-02, the French
petition has not yet set a closing date. But it is certain to remain
open until at least July 2024. One of the aims is to appeal to the
new Parliament of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation, which will be
set up following the legislative elections held in Belgium in June
2024.
As there are also plans to extend the campaign more widely at [the]
European level, with a new English translation of the manifesto and
petition, and even in other languages if we succeed in federating
forces around it, yes, any help in promoting support for this
French-language manifesto and petition among European citizens is
most welcome.
We encourage you to read up on this promising initiative, and
participate in the petition if you agree with their views.
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 Libera.Chat, and usually include a handful of
regulars as well as newcomers. Libera.Chat is accessible from any IRC
client -- Everyone's welcome!
The next meeting is Friday, October 6 from 12:00 to 15:00 EDT (16:00
to 19:00 UTC). Details here:
LibrePlanet featured resource: Introduction to the Command Line
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 Introduction to the Command Line
reverse-engineered sources and other references, which provides an
online reference to this popular book, reverse-engineered source
files, and work towards a second edition. You are invited to adopt,
spread and improve this important resource.
Note: As of this writing, we are unable to locate the source files
for this valuable resource. Although we were able to reverse engineer
the sources from the EPUB version into various formats, we would like
to have a copy of the original sources. If anyone has a copy, please
send it to [email protected]. We have already reached out to various
people, including the project maintainers.
Do you have a suggestion for next month's featured resource? Let us
know at [email protected].
September GNU Spotlight with Amin Bandali: Twelve new GNU releases!
Twelve new GNU releases in the last month (as of September 29, 2023):
Also, the GNU Boot maintainers have published its first release
candidate, and are calling for help for testing, initially from folks
who could recover from computers that don't boot anymore. If you have
the needed skills for rescuing your system from a non-booting state
and want to help test the GNU Boot release candidate please see the
https://savannah.gnu.org/news/?id=10509 for the announcement and
https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gnuboot/ for the downloads.
To download: nearly all GNU software is available most reliably from
https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/. Optionally, you may find faster download
speeds at a mirror located geographically closer to you by choosing
from the list of mirrors published at
https://www.gnu.org/prep/ftp.html, or you may use
https://ftpmirror.gnu.org/ to be automatically redirected to a
(hopefully) nearby and up-to-date mirror.
September 27 this year marked the fortieth anniversary of Richard
Stallman's initial announcement of the plan to develop the GNU
operating system to give users freedom in their computing. There was a
special GNU Hackers' Meeting on September 27 in Switzerland, featuring
presentations about various GNU packages, hacking, and free software
and its critical importance in our societies now and going into the
future. The video recordings and presentation slides are available
from https://www.gnu.org/gnu40/.
Finally, I regret to report we learned that Thien-Thi Nguyen (ttn)
died in October 2022. Thien-Thi was a hacker, artist, writer, and
long-time maintainer and contributor to many GNU programs as well as
other free software packages. He was the GNU maintainer of the rcs,
guile-sdl, alive, and superopt packages, and he was working on GNU Go
as well. Thien-Thi especially loved GNU Emacs, GNU Taler, and GNU Go:
he was the author and maintainer of the gnugo, ascii-art-to-unicode,
and xpm GNU Emacs packages, and made substantial contributions to many
others such as vc, as well as to GNU Taler and its documentation.
We greatly miss Thien-Thi in the free software community -- his death
is a great loss to the Free World. This edition of GNU Spotlight is
dedicated to the memory of Thien-Thi.
As always, please feel free to write to me, [email protected],
with any GNUish questions or suggestions for future installments.
February 3-4, 2023, ULB Solbosch Campus, Brussels, Belgium, FOSDEM
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.
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:
Arne Babenhauserheide (GNU Guile)
David Fussner (GNU AUCTeX, GNU Emacs)
Gavin Downard (GNU Emacs)
Jeffrey Phillips (GNU Emacs)
Paul Nelson (GNU AUCTeX, GNU Emacs)
Want to see your name on this list? Contribute to GNU and assign your
copyright to the FSF.
Contributions from thousands of individual associate 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:
Do you read and write Portuguese and English? The FSF is looking
for translators for the Free Software Supporter. Please send an
email to [email protected] with your interest and a list of your
experience and qualifications.
