Welcome to the Free Software Supporter, the Free Software
Foundation's (FSF) monthly news digest and action update -- being read
by you and 230,313 other activists. That's 462 more than last month!
LibrePlanet 2023: Let's chart the course together! Submit your session by November 2
From September 14
We are proud to announce the fifteenth edition of the Free Software
Foundation's conference on ethical technology and user freedom, which
will be held in spring 2023, both online and in the Boston area (exact
venue to be determined). In these fifteen years, LibrePlanet has
always been a community that brings together concerned users of all
varieties to carve out the direction of software freedom for today as
well as for years to come. The call for sessions is now open and will
close on November 2, 2022. Potential talks should examine free
software through the lens of the theme "Charting the Course."
Want to read this newsletter translated into another language? Scroll
to the end to read the Supporter in French or Spanish.
Free Software Awards: Nominate those who have charted a course to freedom by November 30
From September 21
The dedication and determination of its contributors has helped the
free software movement chart a course to a freer digital
tomorrow. Whether you realize it or not, simply using free software
makes you a part of our collective journey to freedom. On the way to
our destination, there are those inspiring individuals and projects
who go above and beyond in their dedication to the movement and its
principles. Now is your time to show these community members and
projects that you appreciate their vital work. The three award
categories, which will be presented at LibrePlanet 2023, are
"Advancement of Free Software," "Projects of Social Benefit," and
"Outstanding New Free Software Contributor." Deadline for nominations
is November 30.
After a bit of a hiatus, we are rebooting the interview series the FSF
started ten years ago that highlights work by developers who choose
GNU licenses. We are happy to have Martin Dougiamas, CEO of Moodle,
join us for the first interview after this long break. In this
interview, Martin tells us about his experience with remote education
growing up in Western Australia and how it has helped inform the
direction of Moodle Learning Management System (LMS). Moodle LMS,
written in the PHP programming language, is a learning platform
designed to provide educators, administrators, and learners with a
single robust, secure, and integrated system to create personalized
learning environments. He also shares how the
GPLv3 has helped Moodle and its community of
educators, developers, and organizations worldwide.
From September 28 by Ludovic Courtès, Tanguy Le Carrour, and Simon Tournier
It has been ten years since the very first commit of what is now
called "GNU Guix," which is the name coming from its blending of Guile
and Nix. On its tenth year anniversary, everyone involved in the GNU
Guix project has a lot to celebrate. Gathering together in Paris,
France over three days in September, hackers, users, and enthusiasts
conducted dozens of talks, socialized, and even enjoyed a beautiful
cake. Videos, photos, SVG artwork, and more are now available online.
Study of electronic monitoring smartphone apps confirms advocates' concerns of privacy harms
From September 23 by Saira Hussain and Will Greenberg
"Electronic monitoring" software is being used more and more often in
lieu of ankle monitors, which track a person's location at any given
moment. These monitoring measures, used in a probation, parole, or a
immigrant, juvenile, and/or pre-trial context, are installed onto a
person's phone and often send various personal information to the
authorities as well as to the company developing the software itself
and proprietors of third party libraries upon which such data
collection is being utilized. Researchers, presenting the findings at
the 31st USENIX (Unix Users Group) Security Symposium, go into depth
about the privacy implications and how users described "a general
sense of injustice." One individual who has been forced to install the
software says "your money is not worth my freedom!"
The ungodly surveillance of anti-porn 'shameware' apps
From September 22 by Dhruv Mehrotra
It seems that proprietary software companies are continuously finding
yet new ways to exploit their users. So-called "shameware" is software
designed to be installed onto a user's device and report all online
activity directly to another person, whether that be someone's parent,
spouse, teacher, or faith leader. This software is designed to spy
on its users around-the-clock, and it does so by capturing
screenshots, logging software applications used to browse the
Internet, and logging URLs of Web pages visited. The software is also
part of a broader ecosystem of shaming individuals by those in
positions of power, which makes people feel bad about themselves and
which scientific experts find lacking in any proof of a "lasting
positive effect." WIRED's article provides interviews with users who
installed the software under direction of their church leaders as well
as various tests that revealed such things as the software's reliance
on accessibility APIs, designed specifically to assist users with
disabilities, and Facebook's Pixel, which sends sensitive data
directly to Facebook, in order to capture ever-more invasive data on
the person whose device the non-free shameware is installed.
Draft EU AI Act regulations could have a chilling effect on free software
From September 11 by Katyanna Quach
New rules drafted by the European Union (EU) aimed at regulating
artificial intelligence (AI) could prevent developers from releasing
free software models, according to The Brookings Institution. The
proposed EU AI Act, yet to be signed into law, places burdensome and
unnecessary regulations on free software (and source
available) developers. Alex Engler of the
Brookings Institution aptly notes that such regulation for free
software is "broadly unnecessary because, like any other models, they
would already be regulated by the AI Act if they are used for any
covered applications, such as in hiring or in dangerous products." He
also goes on to say that free software general-purpose AI (GPAI)
projects "play two key roles in the future of GPAI: first, they
disseminate power over the direction of AI away from well-resourced
technology companies to a more diverse group of stakeholders. Second,
they enable critical research, and thus public knowledge, on the
function and limitations of GPAI models."
Free Software Foundation Europe's executive director Matthias
Kirschner recently published a book to help introduce children to free
software concepts and what software freedom can mean in their
lives. Through a delightly narrative, protagonist Ada loves to tinker
and repair. And much to the delight of her friends and family, she
even discovers some very useful hacks to modify the technology around
her to work in new fun and useful ways. Meanwhile, Zangemann, a very
wealthy software developer and inventor, tries to control all of the
devices that the citizens of his town are using. Now available for
digital restrictions management -free (DRM-free) download in English,
you may also pre-order physical copies from No Starch Press, which
will be shipped from the US starting in December.
Nextcloud works with governments to create MS Office replacement for the EU
In a promising new development, a number of European governments are
working with Nextcloud,
which is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License version
3 (AGPLv3), to create a platform to help governments regain their
independence from a small number of powerful proprietary software
companies by creating a free Microsoft Office 365 replacement intended
for use by municipal, state, and federal government organizations
within the EU. In addition to achieving overall digital sovereignty,
other expected benefits include having a suite of office software that
is compliant with privacy standards, easy to use, and decentralized.
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, Instant Relay Chat (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 7 from 12:00 to 3:00 EDT (16:00 to
19:00 UTC). Details of the meeting, including how to connect via IRC,
are published on its event page:
LibrePlanet featured resource: Lightning talks for LibrePlanet 2023
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 Lightning talks for LibrePlanet
2023, which provides information about how to submit a lightning talk
to next year's LibrePlanet. Check it out, submit a talk if you like,
and consider helping us spread the word.
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:
Arsen Arsenović (GCC)
Bruno Claude Pierre Barbier (GNU Emacs)
Mikhail Skorzhinskii (GNU Emacs)
Santiago Thomas Calandrino (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.
