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Read and share online: https://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter/2024/october.
Welcome to the Free Software Supporter, the Free Software
Foundation's (FSF) monthly news digest and action update -- being read
by you and 231,236 other activists.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Free software in the EU needs your help! Join the international effort before September 20
- Copyright keepers just destroyed a huge digital library
- Here's how Apple is making iPhone 16 more repairable
- The end of Finale: Reflections and advice for composing in a new era
- Will a vital 'Right To Repair' for the U.S. military get enacted now?
- September GNU Emacs news
- Join the FSF and friends in updating the Free Software Directory
- LibrePlanet featured resource: Software/research/ExternalRepositories
- September GNU Spotlight with Amin Bandali: Fourteen 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/october.
Encourage your friends to subscribe and help us build an audience by
adding our subscriber widget to your website.
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.
We moved! The FSF has changed our address. Find us at: https://www.fsf.org/about/contact.
Free software in the EU needs your help! Join the international effort before September 20
From September 11 and September 16
After the European Commission cut €27 million to fund the Next
Generation Internet (NGI) initiative, it became apparent how insecure
financial support is for free software in Europe. To protect European
technological autonomy, now and beyond, independent and digital
infrastructure should have free software at the very core. The FSF
joined the Free Software Foundation Europe's (FSFE) call to action to
urge the European Commission (EC) to ensure long-term and dedicated
funding for free software projects and called for advocates to join
them in their efforts.
Copyright keepers just destroyed a huge digital library
From September 20 by David Moscrop
The pandemic-era National Emergency Library (NEL), an Internet
Archive (IA) program, suffered a major blow after an appeals court
ruled that the lending practices of the NEL were in violation of
copyright law. Under the NEL program, more library users checked out
digital copies than were permitted under the Digital Restrictions
Management (DRM) technology confining these materials. Following an
intense legal battle between the IA and a coalition of large
publishers, the IA was ultimately forced to remove over five hundred
thousand books from the NEL. The IA isn't giving up yet, but it's
going up against a massive hydra and could use your help to restore
public access to the books that were taken, as well as preserve and
distribute information far into the future. To learn more about DRM,
visit https://defectivebydesign.org.
Here's how Apple is making iPhone 16 more repairable
From September 18 by Brian Heater
Right to repair continues to gain momentum, enough so that tech giants
such as Apple are feeling the pressure to make certain models of the
iPhone more repairable. While the shift to making a few components of
the iPhone 16 does seem indicative that the fight to repair is
working, this change is especially meager considering Apple's
long-term history in restricting user repair, going so far as to
lobbying to make it illegal for users to modify their own devices.
Right now, very limited repairs can be made and they are either quite
difficult if not impossible without purchasing their proprietary
Self-Service Repair Kit. Additionally, Apple itself clearly states
that these self-repair kits and manuals are designed for people with
extensive prior experience in repairing electronic devices, which is
probably not the average user. It seems that this is more of an
attempt to appease the demands of fight to repair activists, and we
say it's nowhere near enough.
The end of Finale: Reflections and advice for composing in a new era
From September 17 by I Care If You Listen and August 28 by Dale Lyles
After almost forty years, Finale, a widely-used nonfree music
composition program and the only one that can read .musx files, is
ending development and technical support within the next eleven
months, as well as the ability to authorize or reauthorize Finale. The
slow death of this program will cost thousands if not millions of
Broadway and indie artists immeasurable stress and resources as they
rush to obtain new software, learn how to use it, and then convert
massive libraries of materials to new files before Finale no longer
works as it once did. The consequences of Finale ending are
unfortunate reminders of what can happen when one company hoards the
source code to a program and denies users freedom.
Will a vital 'Right To Repair' for the U.S. military get enacted now?
From September 13 by Charles Tiefer
An important right to repair provision, 828, in the 2025 National
Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) is up for passage as this
session of Congress wraps up, specifically on the right to repair for
the United States military. As right to repair for U.S. military
equipment and weapons stands currently, vendors hold all of the
cards and warranties, leaving the U.S. military without the parts,
manuals, and skills to repair as needed, including in circumstances
where contractor support is expensive, unreliable, or nonexistent.
While provision 828 does have strong bipartisan support, it is
facing equally if not stronger opposition from more than 60 state
and national manufacturing and trading groups.
September GNU Emacs news
From September 30 by Sacha Chua
In these issues: Testing Emacs 30 pre-releases, quick tips on using
profiler-start, 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 Friday, October 4 from 12:00 to 15:00 EDT (16:00
to 19:00 UTC). Details here: https://www.fsf.org/events/fsd-2024-10-04-irc.
LibrePlanet featured resource: Software/research/ExternalRepositories
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
Software/research/ExternalRepositories, which attempts to summarize
research about third party package managers, especially to understand
which ones can be added in or kept in FSDG-compliant distributions, and
which ones should be removed or replaced. 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 [email protected].
September GNU Spotlight with Amin Bandali: Fourteen new GNU releases!
Fourteen new GNU releases in the last month (as of September 30, 2024):
For a full list with descriptions, please see https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/september-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
- 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:
- Rolando Garza
- Tomislav Pintaric
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 Ramirez (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/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/2024/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/2024/outubro.
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=a43f5c2b932aa9933a6ffbe16ee5e3a3_1727910363_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
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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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