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Read and share online: https://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter/2021/may

Welcome to the Free Software Supporter, the Free Software Foundation's (FSF) monthly news digest and action update -- being read by you and 225,095 other activists. That's 528 more than last month!

Work is continuing to improve governance at the FSF

From April 29th

Since the announcement that FSF founder Richard Matthew Stallman (RMS) was returning to the FSF board of directors at the end of the LibrePlanet conference in March, the board has been working hard on efforts to make the FSF more transparent and responsive to the needs of the free software community. The changes in the operations and leadership of the FSF are still ongoing as of this writing, and new announcements will continue to be released over the coming weeks; please watch https://www.fsf.org/news and FSF social media accounts for continued updates. Changes to the FSF's bylaws and structure need to be done with great care, but the board is moving with urgency. We do read all of the feedback sent to us at [email protected].

TABLE OF CONTENTS

  • Free Software Wireless-N Mini Router v3 from ThinkPenguin, Inc. now FSF-certified to Respect Your Freedom
  • "FLOSS for Science" podcast interviews FSF copyright and licensing associate about GNU licenses
  • How I fought to graduate without using nonfree software
  • Identifying "underproduced" software
  • Apple will reportedly face EU antitrust charges this week
  • Dissecting the Apple M1 GPU, part III
  • Software-hardware forced bundling: When exercising your rights is an individual feat, the rules must change
  • Dortmund relies on free software: This paves the way for "Public Money? Public Code!"
  • Twenty years of FSFE: Interview with Fernanda Weiden
  • GUADEC 2021: Registrations are now open!
  • States are moving on privacy bills. Over 4 in 5 voters want the US Congress to prioritize protection of online data.
  • University responds to ban on Linux kernel contributions
  • Q&A with Grafana Labs CEO Raj Dutt about our licensing changes
  • Signal CEO cracks Cellebrite iPhone decryption device used by cops
  • GCC 11.1 released
  • April GNU Emacs news
  • Join the FSF and friends in updating the Free Software Directory
  • LibrePlanet featured resource: Defective by Design/Ideas/Guide
  • GNU Spotlight with Mike Gerwitz: 16 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/may

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Free Software Wireless-N Mini Router v3 from ThinkPenguin, Inc. now FSF-certified to Respect Your Freedom

From April 30th

The FSF has awarded Respects Your Freedom (RYF) certification to the Free Software Wireless-N Mini Router v3 (TPE-R1300) from ThinkPenguin, Inc. The RYF certification mark means that these products meet the FSF's standards in regard to users' freedom, control over the product, and privacy. This is ThinkPenguin's first device to receive RYF certification in 2021, adding to their vast catalogue of certified devices.

"FLOSS for Science" podcast interviews FSF copyright and licensing associate about GNU licenses

From April 30th by FLOSS for Science

In August 2020, the FSF's copyright and licensing associate Craig Topham was invited to a conversation with David Brassard and Patrick Diehl about GNU licenses, on their podcast, which has the goal of showcasing free software uses in science. The episode release was delayed by the pandemic, but the interview is finally now available -- check it out!

How I fought to graduate without using nonfree software

From April 17th by Wojciech Kosior

During the pandemic, we saw educational facilities hastily embrace proprietary tools such as Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and WhatsApp. Schools and universities then tried to impose them on students, who subsequently suffered the loss of freedom from using programs that users don't control, as well as bad security and violations of privacy.

Because I refuse to use unethical software, the complete reliance on proprietary platforms has created an ethical conflict. My aim has been to complete my university degree without surrendering to the imposed nonfree services, by convincing my professors to allow me to use only free software replacements to proprietary applications. I didn't expect to win a fight against such power, but now, through polite but firm action, I think I may have prevailed. Hopefully this story will help you resist, too.

Identifying "underproduced" software

From March 29th by Benjamin Mako Hill and Kaylea Champion

Critical software we all rely on can silently crumble away beneath us. Unfortunately, we often don’t find out software infrastructure is in poor condition until it is too late. Over the last year or so, I have been supporting Kaylea Champion on a project my group announced earlier to measure software underproduction -- a term we use to describe software that is low in quality but high in importance.

Underproduction reflects an important type of risk in widely used free software because participants often choose their own projects and tasks. Because free software contributors work as volunteers and choose what they work on, important projects aren’t always the ones to which free software developers devote the most attention. Even when developers want to work on important projects, relative neglect among important projects is often difficult for free software contributors to see.

Apple will reportedly face EU antitrust charges this week

From April 27th by Tom Warren

The European Commission will issue antitrust charges against Apple over concerns about the company’s App Store practices, according to a report from the Financial Times. The commission has been investigating whether Apple has broken EU competition rules with its App Store policies, following an initial complaint from Spotify back in 2019 over Apple’s 30 percent cut on subscriptions.

The European Commission opened up two antitrust investigations into Apple’s App Store and Apple Pay practices last year, and the Financial Times only mentions upcoming charges on the App Store case. It’s not clear yet what action will be taken.

Obviously, our issues with Apple and the App Store go quite a bit deeper than antitrust issues -- you can read more about our issues with Apple here and about the shortcomings of merely focusing on antitrust here.

Dissecting the Apple M1 GPU, part III

From April 18th by Alyssa Rosenzweig

After a few weeks of investigating the Apple M1 GPU in January, I was able to draw a triangle with my own free code. Although I began dissecting the instruction set, the shaders there were specified as machine code. A real graphics driver needs a compiler from high-level shading languages (GLSL or Metal) to a native binary. Our understanding of the M1 GPU’s instruction set has advanced over the past few months. Last week, I began writing a free software shader compiler targeting the Apple GPU. Progress has been rapid: at the end of its first week, it can compile both basic vertex and fragment shaders, sufficient to render 3D scenes. The spinning cube pictured above has its shaders written in idiomatic GLSL, compiled with the nascent free software compiler, and rendered with native code like the first triangle in January. No proprietary blobs here!

Software-hardware forced bundling: When exercising your rights is an individual feat, the rules must change

From April 11th by April

The Court of Monza, Italy, confirmed in December 2020 that one is entitled to a refund for a Microsoft Windows license that was purchased along with a computer, and ordered Lenovo to pay €20,000 in damages to Luca Bonissi, the plaintiff, for abusive behavior. This impressive win, obtained by a free software activist after a courageous legal struggle, is a clear reminder of the need to fight the forced bundling of software and hardware, and to change the rules of the game.

Dortmund relies on free software: This paves the way for "Public Money? Public Code!"

From March 31st by Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE)

With a groundbreaking resolution, the city of Dortmund, Germany has committed itself to the use of free software. With an overwhelming, cross-faction majority, the city council has paved the way for "Public Money? Public Code!” In the future, software developed or commissioned by the administration will be made available to the general public.

Twenty years of FSFE: Interview with Fernanda Weiden

From April 20th by FSFE

As part of their birthday celebration, FSFE interviewed Fernanda Weiden, the co-founder of the FSF Latin America (FSFLA) and former Vice President of the FSFE, about the early starts of free software in Latin America, the current use of free software in "big tech," and about support for diversity in different communities.

Fernanda "nanda" Weiden has a long history of personal engagement with free software and the FSFE. Raised in Porto Alegre, Brasil, Fernanda organised FISL, the largest free software conference in Latin America. Later, she became a founding and council member of FSFLA, before moving to Europe, where she joined the FSFE as a volunteer. She served as vice president of FSFE from 2009-2011.

GUADEC 2021: Registrations are now open!

From April 8th by the GNOME Project

The GUADEC organizers are pleased to announce that the registrations for GUADEC 2021 are now open!

GUADEC is the the largest annual gathering of GNOME developers and community members. This year it will take place on July 21th-25th, and because of the COVID-19 pandemic it will be online. If you are planning to attend please register at https://events.gnome.org/event/9/registrations/34/.

States are moving on privacy bills. Over 4 in 5 voters want the US Congress to prioritize protection of online data.

From April 27th by Sam Sabin

As more US states introduce and consider their own data privacy bills, public support for Congress to pass a national standard is holding strong, with 83 percent of voters saying it should be a “top” or “important, but lower” congressional priority this year.

While Congress continues to punt on a conversation about a national framework, states have been taking matters into their own hands: at least 20 states have introduced their own privacy bills this calendar year alone, according to the International Association of Privacy Professionals, with Virginia becoming the second state after California to pass a law in March. And experts are watching longer legislative sessions in Florida, Colorado, Alaska, Connecticut and New York for any additional privacy laws this year.

University responds to ban on Linux kernel contributions

From April 22nd by Nathaniel Mott

The University of Minnesota Department of Computer Science and Engineering announced that it's looking into a ban on contributing to the Linux kernel that was issued after its research attracted the ire of the stable release channel's steward.

That ban was issued on Wednesday by Greg Kroah-Hartman, a Linux kernel developer responsible for the stable channel's release, due to a project that intentionally added bugs to the Linux kernel in the name of security research.

Q&A with Grafana Labs CEO Raj Dutt about our licensing changes

From April 20th by Richard "RichiH" Hartmann

When Grafana Labs CEO and co-founder Raj Dutt announced to the team that the company would be relicensing our core free software projects from Apache 2.0 to the GNU Affero General Public License (AGPLv3), he opened the floor for discussion and encouraged anyone who had further questions to reach out. We believe in honesty and transparency, so we collected hard questions from Grafanistas, and Raj answered them for this public Q&A.

Signal CEO cracks Cellebrite iPhone decryption device used by cops

From April 21st by Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai

One of the biggest encrypted chat apps in the world just showed how a device used to decrypt messages can be cracked and tampered with. Cellebrite is a company that sells devices to law enforcement that uses vulnerabilities in mobile devices to snoop on all of the data from a phone. Cellebrite devices are used by police to unlock iPhones in order to gather evidence from encrypted devices. This can include photos and messages on the device, potentially including Signal messages. While we're not sure if these devices are currently useful against Replicant or other free software on mobile devices, it's important that we all stay informed about stories like this, and that we remember that any exploit used by law enforcement can be used by others too.

GCC 11.1 released

From April 27th by GCC

The GNU Compiler Collection includes front ends for C, C++, Objective-C, Fortran, Ada, Go, and D, as well as libraries for these languages. GCC was originally written as the compiler for the GNU operating system. The GNU system was developed to be 100% free software, free in the sense that it respects the user's freedom.

This release is a major release, containing new features (as well as many other improvements) relative to GCC 10.x.

April GNU Emacs news

From April 30th by Sacha Chua

In these issues: make use of the Super key; multiple Help buffers; run shell commands from the minibuffer; a quick introduction to editing with smartparens; 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, May 7th, from 12pm to 3pm EDT (16:00 to 19:00 UTC). Details here:

LibrePlanet featured resource: Defective by Design/Ideas/Guide

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 Defective by Design/Ideas/Guide, which invites you to submit suggestions to add to Defective by Design's DRM-free living guide (items free of Digital Restrictions Management). 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].

GNU Spotlight with Mike Gerwitz: 16 new GNU releases!

16 new GNU releases in the last month (as of May 01, 2021):

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:

  • Aqua Hill Foundation
  • Aram Rae Family
  • Casper Freksen
  • Catalin Francu
  • Chica Burnett Foundation
  • Daniel Lloyd-Miller
  • Dongjun Lee
  • Edward Flick
  • Jamss O'Hara
  • Jeff Moe
  • Kenji Hosoda
  • Lee & Heidi Newberg Fund
  • Manning Polan Charitable Fund
  • Marius Feteanu
  • Mathew Woodyard
  • Michael and Amy Tiemann
  • Pean Lim
  • Raffael Stocker
  • Rob Teng
  • Robert Read
  • Rogers-Tanner Family Fund
  • 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:

  • Daniel Díaz (Chess)
  • Lê Trung Đan (Emacs)
  • Matthew Beshara (Emacs)
  • Vitezslav Crhonek (Texinfo)

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/mayo

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=2331ebb7f463099e600817b17f3ec4bd_1620097120_168

Le Free Software Supporter est disponible en français. Pour voir la version française cliquez ici: https://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter/2021/mai

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=2331ebb7f463099e600817b17f3ec4bd_1620097120_168

O Free Software Supporter está disponível em português. Para ver a versão em português, clique aqui: https://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter/2021/maio

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=2331ebb7f463099e600817b17f3ec4bd_1620097120_168

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.

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Copyright © 2021 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/.