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Read and share online: https://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter/2021/july
Welcome to the Free Software Supporter, the Free Software
Foundation's (FSF) monthly news digest and action update -- being read
by you and 225,910 other activists. That's 348 more than last month!
Move freedom forward: Donate today and help us reach our goal of USD 50,000 by July 16
From June 19th
Without free software, we cannot and will not have a free society. To
ensure a liberated future, it is vital that we educate ourselves and
others about the steps we can take to secure our computing rights. It
is a fight that touches the lives of everyone we know, and each of us
has our own freedom story. We want to call attention to these stories,
and use them to encourage people to start their own journey towards
software freedom.
In order to protect your rights, we rely on donations from people like
you, who use and appreciate our work. Fuel our journey forward, and
help us reach our ultimate destination: full software freedom. Share
the free software message using the hashtag #UserFreedom on social
media
networks.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- FSF takes next step in commitment to improving board governance
- Support the FSF tech team
- FSF and GNU move official IRC channels to Libera.Chat network
- Apply to be the FSF's next executive director
- Listen to LibrePlanet 2021 audio in your podcast app!
- My internship at the FSF, and the domino effect of thoughts
- New items from the GNU Press shop!
- How Finland implemented Router Freedom: The regulator's perspective
- IFMSA Bangladesh joins the GNU Health Alliance
- GCC 9.4 released
- June GNU Emacs news
- Join the FSF and friends in updating the Free Software Directory
- LibrePlanet featured resource: Media Coverage
- GNU Spotlight with Mike Gerwitz: 17 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/july
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 takes next step in commitment to improving board governance
From July 1st
As first announced in April, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) board
has been pursuing a series of actions to strengthen and modernize the
foundation’s governance structure and processes. The goal of these
efforts is to better prepare the organization for the challenges and
opportunities that lie ahead.
After a series of interviews with various firms, the board has
retained a professional consultant to help the FSF devise and execute
the changes needed to optimize the impact of the board and the
organization. The FSF is also still actively seeking a new executive
director.
Support the FSF tech team
From June 24th
In some ways, the four-person FSF tech team is living the dream for
any free software fanatic: who wouldn't want to get paid to do what
you love? Every workday, our tech team tweaks and tailors software
that obeys the four freedoms, and keeps the FSF chugging along. The
tradeoff for the warm glow of satisfaction that comes from doing truly
important work, though, is that it's a lot of work: maintaining,
upgrading, and repairing the infrastructure that supports the FSF and
the GNU Project certainly keeps the tech team busy. Plus, they're
always trying to take the experience for our members and supporters to
the next level (which, of course, would be much harder to do if we
were hamstrung by the unjust limitations of proprietary software!).
FSF and GNU move official IRC channels to Libera.Chat network
From June 11
On May 27th, we held a community meeting to discuss the future of the
FSF and GNU Project's official presence on Internet Relay Chat
(IRC). Although this meeting was called as a response to recent
changes in the Freenode IRC network's governance structure, it also
gave us the opportunity to assess the viability of chat protocols that
had not been developed at the time of the FSF and GNU's 2002
announcement to choose Freenode as our official IRC network.
As a result of this meeting and our review, the FSF and GNU have
decided to relocate our IRC channels to Libera.Chat. Effective
immediately, Libera is the official home of our channels, which
include but are not limited to all those in the #fsf, #gnu, and
libreplanet namespaces.
Following our announcement of a planned gradual switch from the
Freenode IRC network to Libera.Chat, Freenode staff, with no notice,
seized control of the #fsf and #gnu channels away from FSF staff and
GNU volunteers during the early hours of Sunday morning (EDT),
requiring a few changes in the initial transition plan. In light of
these events, we would like to reiterate our call for GNU maintainers
to move their channels away from the Freenode network, whether to a
self-hosted server, alternate IRC networks such as Hackint or
Libera.Chat, or other networks that fit the criteria we devised for
our decision.
Apply to be the FSF's next executive director
From May 25th
The FSF seeks a principled, compassionate, and capable leader to be
its new executive director. This position can be remote or based in
our Boston office.
The FSF is committed to the notion that users are entitled to control
their computing, individually and collectively, and therefore to
control the software that does that computing. The executive director
will work closely with the president, board of directors, and all
Foundation staff to achieve this goal. Please read the full job
listing for qualifications and instructions for applying for this
position.
Listen to LibrePlanet 2021 audio in your podcast app!
From June 15th
LibrePlanet 2021 had a fantastic range of talented speakers, and we
want to showcase their terrific talks in every way we can. So if you
prefer listening to viewing, it's time to plan a long afternoon walk,
fire up your favorite free podcasting app, and listen to
LibrePlanet!
My internship at the FSF, and the domino effect of thoughts
From June 16th by Panos Alevropoulos
Hello! My name is Panos Alevropoulos. I was born in and live in
Thessaloniki, Greece, and I am a law student at Aristotle University
of Thessaloniki. This is my introductory post in the course of my
internship at the Free Software Foundation. Specifically, I will work
remotely with the campaigns and licensing teams, contributing to areas
that could benefit from someone with legal experience. The campaign I
will focus on most is End Software
Patents, a legal topic that I find
particularly fascinating, and which I hope to delve into. In this
short article, I would like to briefly recount how I came to know
about free software.
New items from the GNU Press shop!
The new #GNU shirt color of the year is: coral orange! Pre-order your
shirt by July 16
(mailing willl take place after all pre-orders are received), and show
the world what GNU means to you.
Or, for something completely different: need help making decisions
about thorny issues of software freedom? Consult the Software Freedom
Advice Orb!
Simply ask a question, invert the orb, and receive some free software
wisdom. The orb measures about 4.5 inches in diameter and makes an
excellent gift for any free software enthusiast who might benefit from
a spheroid's counsel. Please note that the FSF is not responsible for
any consequences of obedience to the Orb ("orbedience").
Finally: we still have snazzy FSF 35th Anniversary Lapel
Pins in
stock!
How Finland implemented Router Freedom: The regulator's perspective
From June 29th by FSFE
In the context of the telecom reform in the European Union, Finland
has ruled in favor of Router Freedom in their country. The FSFE
acknowledges this as a major win for end-users' rights. FSFE
interviewed Klaus Nieminen, a representative of the Finnish network
regulator Traficom, to learn more about this decision.
IFMSA Bangladesh joins the GNU Health Alliance
From June 7th by Luis Falcon
The International Federation of Medical Students Association, IFMSA
Bangladesh, is a nonprofit organization with 3,500+ medical students
and 65 universities across the country, and they are now part of the
GNU Health Alliance of Academic and Research Institutions. The IFMSA
vision and mission fits very well with those of GNU Solidario
advancement of Social Medicine: IFMSA has projects on public health,
and human rights and peace. I am positive the GNU Health ecosystem
will help them reach their goals in each of their projects!
GCC 9.4 released
From June 1st by GCC developers
The GNU Project and the GCC developers are pleased to announce the
release of GCC 9.4.
This release is a bug-fix release, containing fixes for regressions in
GCC 9.3 relative to previous releases of GCC.
June GNU Emacs news
From June 28th by Sacha Chua
In these issues: Emacs steno interface, Luca's literate Emacs config,
delving further into the why of Emacs; make icomplete less blinky and
more responsive; 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, July 2, from 12pm to 3pm EDT (16:00 to
19:00 UTC). Details here:
LibrePlanet featured resource: Media Coverage
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 Media Coverage, which provides
information about how you can help to bring free software to the
attention of a wider audience. 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: 17 new GNU releases!
17 new GNU releases in the last month (as of June 30, 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:
- Andrew Miller
- Arnold Reinhold
- Arthur Gleckler
- The Bitcoin Liberty Fund
- Charlie Ebert
- jose antonio vega ruiz
- Mark Harris
- Michael Albert
- Olivier Warin
- René Genz
- Stéphane Bortzmeyer
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:
- Alexander Kraak (Emacs)
- Colin Woodbury (Emacs)
- Ivan Sokolov (Emacs)
- Jiangbin Zhao (Emacs)
- Magne Hov (GDB, Binutils)
- Mark Harmstone (GCC, Binutils)
- Yuzhana Ego (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 aqui:
https://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter/2021/julio
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=ae46ac360ec28536f7e6d2f4d778dfec_1625207312_168
Le Free Software Supporter est disponible en français. Pour voir la
version française cliquez ici:
https://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter/2021/juillet
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=ae46ac360ec28536f7e6d2f4d778dfec_1625207312_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/julho
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=ae46ac360ec28536f7e6d2f4d778dfec_1625207312_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
(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.
#
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/.
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