Welcome to the Free Software Supporter, the Free Software Foundation's (FSF)
monthly news digest and action update -- being read by you and 227,477
other activists. That's 605 more than last month!
LibrePlanet 2022 returns online: Submit your session proposal by December 1
From October 6th
The fourteenth edition of the Free Software Foundation's (FSF)
conference on technology and social justice will be held in
spring 2022, online. The Call for Sessions is now open, and will
close on December 1, 2021. Potential talks should examine free
software through the lens of this year's theme: Living
Liberation.
Want to read this newsletter translated into another language? Scroll
to the end to read the Supporter in French, Spanish, or Portuguese.
FSF job opportunity: Outreach and communications coordinator
From September 2nd
Reporting to the executive director, the outreach and communications
coordinator works closely with our campaigns, licensing, technical,
and operations teams to plan, write, edit, publish, and promote
high-quality, effective materials, both digital and printed. These
materials are a critical part of advancing the FSF's work in support
of the GNU Project, free software adoption, copyleft licensing, and
freedom on the Internet; and against Digital Restrictions Management
(DRM), software patents, and proprietary software. Nearly every
publication from the FSF goes through this public-facing position,
tying together our work across various constituencies.
Free Software Awards: Nominate those who help us live liberation by November 30th
From October 28th
The dedication of the developers, documentation writers,
community organizers, and volunteers of the free software
movement is what has helped us all live liberation in the years
the free software movement has been active. Just using free
software makes you part of our collective journey to freedom, but
some go above and beyond in their dedication to the free software
movement. Now, it's time for us to show those community members
and projects that we appreciate their vital work.
October 5th marked the official release of Windows 11, a new version
of the operating system that doesn't do anything at all to
counteract Windows' long history of depriving users of freedom
and digital autonomy. While we might have been encouraged by
Microsoft's vague, aspirational slogans about community and
togetherness, Windows 11 takes important steps in the wrong
direction when it comes to user freedom.
Imagine your local farmers market: every Saturday the whole town
comes together to purchase fresh and homemade goods, enjoy the
entertainment, and find that there is always something for
everyone. Whatever you need, you can find it here, and anyone can
sign up to have their own little stand. It is a wonderful place,
or so it seems. Now, imagine starting out as a pumpkin farmer,
and you want to sell your pumpkins at this market. The market
owner asks 30% of every pumpkin that you sell. It's steep, but
the market owner -- we'll call him Mr. Apple -- owns all the
markets in your area, so you have little choice.
Instead of trying to maintain the status quo one court case after
the other, it is time to evolve, Apple, move forward with
freedom, not against it. As one of the most successful and
richest companies in the world, we can not let it tell us that
absolute control over our user freedom is a justifiable price to
pay to make sure its technology is up to par.
EmacsConf is the conference about the joy of Emacs and Emacs
Lisp. The schedule for EmacsConf 2021 is now live, so help spread the
word!
EmacsConf 2021 is held as an online conference again this
year. We remain fully committed to freedom, and we will continue
using our infrastructure and streaming setup consisting entirely
of free software, much like previous EmacsConf conferences.
Software Freedom Conservancy files right-to-repair lawsuit against California TV manufacturer Vizio Inc. for alleged GPL violations
From October 19th by Software Freedom Conservancy
Software Freedom Conservancy announced it has filed a
lawsuit against Vizio Inc. for what it calls repeated failures to
fulfill even the basic requirements of the General Public
License (GPL).
The lawsuit alleges that Vizio’s TV products, built on its
SmartCast system, contain software that Vizio unfairly
appropriated from a community of developers who intended
users to have very specific rights to modify, improve, share,
and reinstall modified versions of the software.
This minor update to the 9.x "Etiona" series is intended to
provide an up to date set of ISO images, both for use as an
installation medium and as a live environment with newer
packages.
In other news, the development of Trisquel 10 is ongoing at great
pace, with initial ISO images being now available for testing.
Ecodesign directive: FSFE calls for device neutrality and upcycling of software
From October 15th by FSFE
As a contribution to the revisal of the EU ecodesign directive and
to help understand the impact of software obsolescence, the FSFE
publishes a study on the sustainability of software. The findings
of the study culminate in five core demands for a more
sustainable digitization, covering the interplay of devices,
software, and infrastructure.
Canon sued for disabling printer scanners when devices run out of ink
From October 19th by Karl Bode
For more than a decade now, computer printer manufacturers have
been engaged in an endless quest called: "let's be as annoying as
humanly possible." That quest, driven by a desire to monopolize
and boost the sale of their own printer cartridges, has resulted
in all manner of obnoxious Digital Restrictions Management (DRM)
and other restrictions designed to make using cheaper,
third-party printing cartridges a monumental headache. Often,
software or firmware updates have been designed to intentionally
grind printing to a halt if you try to use these alternative
options.
Donald Trump’s new social network violated software-licensing terms, tech org says
From October 22nd by Todd Spangler
The Software Freedom Conservancy, which enforces free software
software agreements, said Trump’s Truth social Web site — launched
by the newly formed Trump Media & Technology Group — failed to
provide the source code to users, as required under the Affero
General Public License (AGPL), a “copyleft license” published by
the Free Software Foundation.
Trump's new social media platform found using Mastodon code
From October 29 by Eugen Rochko
On Oct 26, we sent a formal letter to Truth Social’s chief legal
officer, requesting the source code to be made publicly available
in compliance with the license. According to AGPLv3, after being
notified by the copyright holder, Truth Social has 30 days to
comply or the license may be permanently revoked.
There are times when what looked like the right design choice
some years back comes out as an odd choice as time passes. The
beloved guix environment tool is having that fate. Its
command-line interface has become non-intuitive and annoying for
the most common use cases. Since it could not be changed without
breaking compatibility in fundamental ways, we devised a new
command meant to progressively replace it; guix shell -- that’s the
name we unimaginatively ended up with -- has just landed after a
three-week review period, itself a follow-up to discussions and
hesitations on the best course of action.
This post introduces guix shell, how it differs from guix
environment, the choices we made, and why we hope you will like
it.
It is with heavy hearts that we mourn and celebrate our friend
and colleague Elliot Harmon, who passed away peacefully on
Saturday morning following a lengthy battle with melanoma. We
will deeply miss Elliot’s clever mind, powerful pen, generous
heart, and expansive kindness. We will carry his memory with us
in our work.
We at the FSF greatly appreciate the work Elliot did as an
advocate for user freedom, and are deeply saddened by this loss.
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, November 5th from 12pm to 3pm EDT (16:00 to
19:00 UTC). Details here:
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 Skype Replacement, which
provides information about real-time voice and video chat
protocols and clients to help you and your loved ones communicate
in freedom. You are invited to adopt, spread and improve this
important resource.
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:
Jai Thomas Crooks Flack (GNU Emacs)
Corwin Edward Brust (GNU Emacs)
Christophe Troestler (GNU Emacs)
Tyler Jeffrey Grinn (GNU Emacs)
Genki SATO (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:
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.
