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Read and share online: https://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter/2024/august
Welcome to the Free Software Supporter, the Free Software
Foundation's (FSF) monthly news digest and action update -- being read
by you and 231,044 other activists.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- We met our new associate member goal thanks to you!
- A world where software freedom has a fighting chance and hope exists
- Let's not celebrate CrowdStrike -- let's point to a better way
- Make a pledge to share free software with a friend
- Spring Bulletin Issue 44 now online! Read and share it with your community
- Share free software with your friends and colleagues
- The Licensing & Compliance Team, running at full steam for your freedom
- The KOSA internet censorship bill just passed the senate — it's our last chance to stop it
- The real reason behind the AT&T outage that blocked 92m calls
- Beyond pride month: protecting digital identities for LGBTQ+ people
- Register your Software Freedom Day event!
- July GNU Emacs news
- Join the FSF and friends in updating the Free Software Directory
- LibrePlanet featured resource: Women's Caucus
- July GNU Spotlight with Amin Bandali: 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/2024/august
Encourage your friends to subscribe and help us build an audience by
adding our subscriber widget to your website.
Missed an issue? You can catch up on back issues at
https://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter.
Want to read this newsletter in a different language? Scroll to the end to
read the Supporter in French, Spanish, or Portuguese.
We met our new associate member goal thanks to you!
From July 30
We are very happy to announce that we surpassed our spring goal!
We're so excited to welcome 207 new members to the community, and
it's all thanks to amazing user freedom advocates like you! We are
incredibly inspired by how our community stepped up to help us, and
how free software supporters such as yourself are the reason we
continuously find new energy and reason to advocate for free
software. Read below to get an overview on what we've accomplished
during the past month and some exciting things that you can look
forward to during the latter half of 2024.
A world where software freedom has a fighting chance and hope exists
From July 25
Our small but mighty tech team (consisting of Ian Kelling and Michael
McMahon) has completed a laundry list of tech initiatives supporting
the free software movement. They would like to tell you a little more
about their technical work at LibrePlanet this year, what running an
organization exclusively on free software looks like on a daily basis, and
how you can help them continue defending and advancing software
freedom.
Let's not celebrate CrowdStrike -- let's point to a better way
From July 24
If you read the news, went to work, or boarded a plane in the last few
days, you no doubt encountered stories about the CrowdStrike
incident, in which automatic updates to a Windows kernel driver
pushed by a third-party security company crashed countless machines
worldwide. For the first time in years, the mainstream press is actually
using words like "kernel," and other words they typically avoid that
would give the idea that there's anything happening behind Windows
10's flashy colors. As free software activists, we ought to take the
opportunity to look at the situation and see how things could have gone
differently.
Make a pledge to share free software with a friend
From July 16
We all have that first program that sparked our love and commitment to
free software. This year, we're inviting you to do the same for someone
else. Join us by signing the pledge.
Spring Bulletin Issue 44 now online! Read and share it with the community
From July 10
We're excited to announce that the Spring 2024 edition of the Free
Software Bulletin is now available online for you and everyone who
cares about personal freedoms to read and share over email and
microblog.
Share free software with your friends and colleagues
From July 5
Have you ever wanted to help a friend, colleague, or even a complete
stranger get started using free software? We put together a toolkit on
introducing people to free software. This comprehensive how-to
covers getting someone curious about free software, examples of
elevator pitches, helping someone discover why they might want to
switch to free software, assisting with installation of someone's first
free software program, introducing them to next steps, showing them
where to find help, and inviting them to get active in the community. If
you have someone in mind that you'd like to introduce to free software,
check out this guide before you start the conversation!
The Licensing & Compliance Team, running at full steam for your freedom
From July 2
Krzysztof Siewicz and Craig Topham, our licensing team, have put the pedal to
the metal in their work to uphold and defend the GNU licenses. They have been
doing important work on problems with confusing derivatives of GNU licenses
in much the same way the FSF approaches enforcement for GPL violations,
through our Principles of Community GPL Enforcement. Learn more below
about the important work the Licensing Team has been doing to protect your
freedom.
The KOSA internet censorship bill just passed the senate — it's our last chance to stop it
From July 30 by Joe Mullin
Earlier this week, the Senate passed KOSA, a bill that enables federal
and state governments to investigate and sue any website that in their
opinion, causes mental distress to minors. While on the surface it
might sound like a bill that will protect children, in reality it allows
politicians and bureacrats to rule on what people, especially children,
are allowed to view and read online. It could go up for a vote any day
in the House, but it's not too late to act - read the article below and
take action to prevent KOSA passing.
The real reason behind the AT&T outage that blocked 92m calls
From July 24 by Isobel O'Sullivan
Earlier this year, 92 million calls were attempted on the AT&T network
that were blocked during a 12-hour period, with 25,000 of those calls
being attempts to reach 911. The FCC ultimately determined that this
outage was entirely preventable and resulted from multiple procedural
failures, including a lack of peer review, inadequate lab testing, and
the negligence to carry out a post-installation test. When the software
used is nonfree and dependent on a singular (and sometimes
negligent) central structure, that puts at risk your ability to
conduct business or reach emergency services. This probably isn't the
last time that a large private corporation's failed software update will
impact millions, so learn a little more about what happened and how
relying on proprietary software can impact your ability to communicate.
Beyond pride month: protecting digital identities for LGBTQ+ people
From July 17 by Paige Collings and Daly Barnett
We as activists must consider the many ways that our information
can be used against us. Thankfully, though, there are a lot of things
that activists can do to protect their information and that of other
activists online. You may already be using some of these protection
methods, but if you're not, or it's been a little while since you first
created a privacy plan, now might be the time to review your
personal barrier against passive bulk surveillance. This quick guide
is an excellent starting point for you or your friends to use, and is
friendly to people who are newer to using technology to protect
themselves. We also recommend using our Email Self-Defense
guide for setting up end-to-end encryption to help protect email
communications. While none of these tools guarantee 100% safety,
they dramatically increase the odds of you and fellow activists
staying safe. Strengthen your online protections today!
Register your Software Freedom Day event!
From June 30 by Digital Freedom Foundation
Software Freedom Day (SFD) is a worldwide celebration of free software
with the goal to educate the worldwide public about the benefits of
using libre software in education, in government, at home, and in
business. Register your Software Freedom Day event today to be part of
this awesome celebration on September 21! The Digital Freedom
Foundation, which coordinates SFD, is always looking for contributors,
so go to the site to see how you or your company can help.
July GNU Emacs news
From July 29 by Sacha Chua
In these issues: consult-omni, ekg version 0.6.0, 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 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 this Friday, August 2 from 12:00 to 15:00 EDT (16:00
to 19:00 UTC). Details here: https://www.fsf.org/events/fsd-2024-08-02-irc
If tomorrow is too soon, there will be another meeting next Friday,
August 9 from 12:00 to 15:00 EDT
LibrePlanet featured resource: Women's Caucus
Every month on the LibrePlanet
wiki, we highlight one
resource that is interesting and useful -- often one that could use
your help.
This month, we are highlighting the Women's Caucus, which lists free
software projects and related resources specifically for those who
identify as women. This resource was designed with the vision of
encouraging women to get involved, providing advice on getting started
in free software activism, connecting them with community mentors, and
in general, supplying a wide variety of opportunities for women eager to join
the movement. We welcome you to use this resource if you identify as a
woman, and if you don't, to share it with friends and colleagues who do.
Do you have a suggestion for next month's featured resource? Let us
know at [email protected].
July GNU Spotlight with Amin Bandali: nineteen new GNU releases!
Nineteen new GNU releases in the last month (as of July 28, 2024):
For a full list with descriptions, please see: https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/july-gnu-spotlight-with-amin-bandali
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 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.
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 me, [email protected],
with any GNUish questions or suggestions for future installments.
FSF and other free software events
- July 28 - August 4, 2024, Busan, South Korea, DebConf24
- August 1-4, 2024, Portland State University, Portland, OR, FOSSY
- August 27-31, 2024, FAIR, Darmstadt, Germany, European GNU Radio Days
- September 14-16, 2024, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic, GNU Tools Cauldron
- September 21, 2024, Software Freedom Day
- October 27-29, 2024, Raleigh Convention Center, Raleigh, NC, ATO
- November 8-9, 2024, Online and University of Washington, Seattle, WA, SeaGL
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:
- Antoine Mercadal
- Blue Systems
- Christian & Andreea Francu
- David Almassian
- David Ignat
- Denis Lopez Camacho
- Dwayne Dever
- John Gilmore
- Martin Krafft
- Michael Reed
- Neil Banerjee
- Niko Neufeld
- Pablo González Otero
- Paul Morris
- Pete Batard
- Peter Sluka
- Raffael Stocker
- René Genz
- 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:
- Alexandre Rogers (GNU Emacs)
- Jianwei Sun (GNU Binutils)
- Kai Harries (GNU Emacs)
- Collin Funk (GNU Automake, GNU Coreutils)
- Stephane Marks (GNU Emacs)
- Ankit Gadiya (GNU Emacs)
- Nicholas OBrien (GNU Emacs)
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 aquí:
https://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter/2024/agosto
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=3095323&cs=797c0c310c9216795b15d1021b517390_1722567584_168
Le Free Software Supporter est disponible en français. Pour voir la
version française cliquez ici:
https://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter/2024/aout
Pour modifier vos préférences et recevoir les prochaines
publications du Supporter en français, cliquez ici:
https://my.fsf.org/civicrm/profile/create?reset=1&gid=34&id=3095323&cs=797c0c310c9216795b15d1021b517390_1722567584_168
O Free Software Supporter está disponível em português. Para ver a
versão em português, clique aqui: https://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter/2024/agosto-pt
Para alterar as preferências do usuário e receber as próximas
edições do Supporter em português, clique aqui:
https://my.fsf.org/civicrm/profile/create?reset=1&gid=34&id=3095323&cs=797c0c310c9216795b15d1021b517390_1722567584_168
Take action with 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:
I'm an FSF member -- Help us support software freedom!
https://my.fsf.org/join
The FSF is always looking for
volunteers. 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 and take action on software
patents, Digital Restrictions
Management, free
software adoption,
OpenDocument,
and more.
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.
Copyright © 2024 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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