Welcome to the Free Software Supporter, the Free Software
Foundation's (FSF) monthly news digest and action update -- being read
by you and 229,534 other activists. That's thirty-eight more than last month!
We far surpassed our goal, and it's all thanks to you!
From July 21
Twice every year, the FSF sets aside time and resources to reach out
and bring updates from each team. This spring, we did just that. We
also set ourselves a fundraising goal of $67,000, which we later
decided to stretch to $70,000. The fundraiser ended on July 18, and we
are proud to announce that we reached our stretch goal, and beyond. We
raised a total of $86,000, all thanks to community support. It is
worth noting that we received donations in various forms -- even a
vehicle donation! (Yes, you can do that, and, yes, it helps. For more
information, please read:
https://www.fsf.org/about/ways-to-donate/.) Now that the spring
appeal is officially over, we take a moment to highlight a few things
we did during this time and thank everyone who contributed to our
success.
Want to read this newsletter translated into another language? Scroll
to the end to read the Supporter in French or Spanish.
FSF voting members release and sign Code of Ethics
From July 27
The voting members of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) have released
and signed a voting member Code of Ethics as the FSF prepares to
solicit nominations for its board of directors from FSF associate
members.
The new voting member Code of Ethics parallels the Code of Ethics
adopted by the FSF board of directors in
December. It lays out ten principles that should guide decision-making
for voting members as they exercise their duties, which include
electing FSF board members and voting members.
FSF campaigns manager Greg Farough reports on this year's Hackers on
Planet Earth (HOPE) conference and takes us behind the FSF booth and
to the FSF member meetup. Taking place at St. John's University in
Queens, New York, phreakers and hackers alike united for the weekend
conference, and FSF staff and volunteers were there to answer
questions and inform attendees about free software. Greg brings to us
the conference's good vibes and some insightful pictures in this
delightful article.
Closing in on fully free BIOSes with the FSF tech team
From July 13
As part of the FSF's spring fundraiser, senior systems administrator
Ian Kelling wrote an article detailing the tech team's recent work to
migrate the last servers running nonfree BIOSes to ones running free
BIOSes. There were many challenges involved, but the tech team was
able to meet those challenges, and this article gives a good road map
for others planning to free their network computers.
Support the FSF licensing team in its continued mission to serve and educate
From July 8
FSF copyright & licensing associate Craig Topham shares the work done
and progress made by the licensing team over the past months. The
licensing team is not always in the spotlight, but they do a lot of
important, never-ending work for software freedom, including copyright
assignments, making educational materials, answering questions,
hosting the weekly Free Software Directory meetings, and researching
new technologies and their implications for software freedom. Topham
details this work in his most recent article.
Spring Bulletin: Verifying licenses, free software in education, and more!
From July 6
The biannual Free Software Foundation Bulletin is now available,
both in-print and online. The Bulletin has articles about basic free
software concepts, such as how to verify free software licenses, as
well as timely articles tackling complex issues, such as artificial
intelligence in government, and free software in education. There is
even a delightful article (with a picture!) about the legendary
Lemote Yeelong, the first fully free-software-compatible netbook. You
are invited to read, learn, and share with others!
There is a new release of LibreJS, the browser plugin that helps you
protect your freedom! Read the release notes, which detail bug fixes
and new features, such as a new headless test for Web site developers
and updated documentation. Also, read about the Free JavaScript campaign,
which features LibreJS as an important resource one can use to browse
the Web in freedom: https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/freejs.
EFF statement on EU Parliament's adoption of digital services act and digital markets act
From July 5 by Electronic Frontier Foundation
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) published its statement of
the European Union's (EU) recent approval of the "Digital Services Act
package." There are some gains in protections for ordinary users, but
the DSA also obliges platforms to assess and mitigate systemic risks,
and there is a lot of ambiguity about how this will turn out in
practice. Much will depend on how social media platforms interpret
their obligations under the DSA, and how EU authorities enforce the
regulation.
Meanwhile, European organizations like the European Digital Rights
(EDRi) have been campaigning against what they call "chat control" for
months. Encryption rights in chat and messaging apps are at stake, and
the organizations have formed ten principles of what it means to, as
they put it, "truly defend children in the digital age," which
include protecting encryption. Whether or not you live within the
EU, we recommend that you inform yourself on the issues and what is at
stake. Read the full EFF statement, support EDRi's list of principles
on their site or the German site https://chat-kontrolle.eu/, and
read what the FSF has said previously about the importance of free
software in truly privacy-respecting communication technology in True
privacy and security depend on free software.
Thomas Lord was born April 26, 1966 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He
supporting free software throughout his life. He worked as an employee
of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), developing for the GNU Project
for several years in the early 1990s.
The FSF recognizes and honors Lord's contribution to free software and
its community. We mourn the loss of Lord, and we express our
condolences to his family, his friends, and colleagues.
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, August 5, 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 GPLv3 interviews, which provides a
list of candidates of free software projects licensed under GPLv3 or
AGPLv3 to be interviewed by the FSF. You are invited to add candidates
to this list as we are restarting these interviews in earnest and
would like your input.
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 using
https://ftpmirror.gnu.org/ to be automatically redirected to a
(hopefully) nearby and up-to-date mirror.
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:
Anton Krug (GCC)
Florian Rommel (GNU Emacs)
Guilherme Janczak (glibc)
Jean-Philippe Gagne Guay (GNU Emacs)
Liu Hui (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:
Do you read and write Portuguese and English? The FSF is looking
for translators for Free Software Supporter. Please send an email to
[email protected] with your interest and a list of your experience
and qualifications.
