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Read and share online: https://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter/2023/january
Welcome to the Free Software Supporter, the Free Software
Foundation's (FSF) monthly news digest and action update -- being read
by you and 230,509 other activists.
Help us defend the freedom to share: Membership drive extended to January 20
From January 3
Since the start of our fundraiser, more than 260 new associate members
-- and even more donors! -- have answered the call to stand strong
with the FSF in support of the freedom to share. We're thrilled and
grateful to have received all the donations and membership renewals
that have contributed to our year-end drive. Because we are ambitious,
we had a goal of 455 new members by December 31. We haven't achieved
our membership goal yet, but since we've seen a strong show of support
in the latter half of our appeal we're extending the date to join,
receive all the benefits of membership, and still receive one of this
year's snazzy and secure webcam covers we're offering, to January
20. If you are able, please consider joining by that date to help us
reach our goal.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- A message from FSF president Geoff Knauth: Your FSF membership will help us build a stronger future for software freedom
- IDAD 2022: Celebrating the freedom to share with a new advocacy video
- Sharing is at the core of the free software community
- Surprise your loved ones with an FSF membership gift
- Amin Bandali: Why it's fun to participate in LibrePlanet
- Join the FSF and support the tech team
- Fall "Bulletin": Fully shareable, fully lovable
- New York breaks the right to repair bill as it’s signed into law
- New persistent memory support in GNU AWK 5.2
- December GNU Emacs news
- Join the FSF and friends in updating the Free Software Directory
- LibrePlanet featured resource: Day Against DRM 2022
- December GNU Spotlight with Amin Bandali: Seventeen 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/2023/january
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 and Spanish.
A message from FSF president Geoff Knauth: Your FSF membership will help us build a stronger future for software freedom
From December 30
FSF president Geoffrey Knauth composed a powerful message to all who
value freedom in which he reflects upon the FSF's role in protecting
every individuals' rights as they are "enshrined in the four
freedoms," as Geoff eloquently puts it. The message sets a solemn and
urgent tone for the new year, while reminding of us the powerful
contribution each one of us can make to the free software movement.
IDAD 2022: Celebrating the freedom to share with a new advocacy video
From December 27
In our sixteenth annual International Day Against DRM (IDAD), we stood
up for the freedom to share cultural works, continuing our fight
against Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) by documenting
interviews with passersby about their thoughts on digital sharing. Our
interview with Muhammad marks the first of this small series. We'll be
publishing others to our social media accounts and PeerTube channel in
the form of a playlist, and naturally, they're free for you to
download, modify and share for use in your own anti-DRM
advocacy. We'll release more interviews in the coming weeks, building
forward momentum in the fight against DRM.
Sharing is at the core of the free software community
From December 23
In a highly personal article, FSF program manager Miriam Bastian
shares why she thinks the freedom to share is important. She reflects
upon her first liberating steps up the freedom ladder, her work and
experience in academia and how sharing freely is necessary for
research, and her reasons why safeguarding software freedom from
mega-corporations who try hard to limit what people can do by way of
DRM is so important.
Surprise your loved ones with an FSF membership gift
From December 22
Joining the FSF as an associate member is one of the best ways to
bring your friends and loved ones into the free software
community. For a full year, they'll be welcomed into the FSF
community's collective push towards freedom, and your support will
allow us to keep on spreading the free software message all year round
-- as well as for years to come. Plus, your gift of a membership will
count towards our fundraising goal of 455 new members, helping us
start this year off right financially.
Amin Bandali: Why it's fun to participate in LibrePlanet
From December 13
Earlier in the month, we shared a blog post from Amin Bandali in which
Amin explains why he loves speaking at, volunteering for, and
participating in the annual FSF LibrePlanet conference. Besides being
an FSF volunteer, Amin wears several hats around the GNU Project,
including as a GNU maintainer, Webmaster, Savannah hacker/admin, and
assistant GNUisance. Amin is also a core organizer of EmacsConf, the
conference about the joy of GNU Emacs and Emacs Lisp. In short, Amin
is a tireless free software activist, and we are very proud that he's
also a member of the LibrePlanet committee.
Join the FSF and support the tech team
From December 7
FSF tech team member Michael McMahon discusses the team's year-round
jobs and responsibilities, how they do their work in freedom, and how
their progress helps to support and strengthen the freedom of the free
software community. In doing this work, the tech team operates
sixty-three different services, platforms, and Web sites for the FSF
staff, the GNU Project, community projects, and the wider free
software community. The FSF maintains infrastructure which includes
Web sites, streaming infrastructure, NetHack and Minetest games,
collaboration tools for members, and more.
Fall "Bulletin": Fully shareable, fully lovable
From December 6
We published the 2022 Fall Free Software Foundation Bulletin. Read
about how to protect your privacy, a reflection on this year's GNU
Hackers' Meeting, what's new in Trisquel 11, and more! As the seasons
change, and those in the Northern Hemisphere prepare for the cold of
winter, we continue our annual cadence of software freedom
advocacy. Sent from the FSF's cozy Boston office, the physical printed
pamphlets have been mailed out to supporters around the world, and
issue forty-one of the FSF Bulletin is now also available online!
New York breaks the right to repair bill as it’s signed into law
From December 28 by Cameron Faulkner
On December 28, 2022, New York governor Kathy Hochul signed the
Digital Fair Repair Act, and the law will go into effect on July 1,
2023. In some ways, this is a historic development in the right to
repair movement. However, it passed with a last-minute amendment that
allows original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) to opt to sell
assemblies of parts, which are typically more expensive and less
efficient, instead of individual components. The bill also won't
require OEMs to provide "passwords, security codes, or materials" to
bypass security features, which is sometimes necessary to save a
locked, but otherwise functional device. We continue to follow and
support the work of right to repair advocates around the world as true
right to repair must have software freedom at its core.
New persistent memory support in GNU AWK 5.2
From December 15 by Terrence Kelly
GNU AWK (gawk) 5.2 now supports transparent persistent memory: gawk can
"remember" script-defined variables and functions in a persistent heap,
which can be re-used by the same script that created it or passed to an
unrelated script. Persistent memory makes scripting easier and sometimes
improves performance dramatically. No special hardware or software is
required to use persistent memory gawk.
The persistent memory gawk User Manual is available here:
https://www.gnu.org/software/gawk/manual/pm-gawk/
A general-purpose, malloc-compatible persistent memory allocator made
persistent memory gawk possible. This allocator is intended to facilitate
retrofitting persistence onto a wide range of software. A description of
the allocator is here: https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3534855
A talk describing the research prototype of persistent memory gawk is
here: https://redirect.invidious.io/watch?v=tLEQ9pYwsbw
December GNU Emacs news
From December 26 by Sacha Chua
In these issues: Emacs lorem ipsum, "Why use EShell?," unlimited ASCII
boxes, 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, January 6 from 12pm to 3pm EST (17:00 to
20:00 UTC). Details here:
LibrePlanet featured resource: Day Against DRM 2022
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 Day Against DRM 2022, which
provides information about DRM-free living and celebrating the freedom
to share. Although the event has ended, the conversation has not. You
are invited to adopt, spread, and improve this important resource,
including interviewing your community about their thoughts on sharing.
Do you have a suggestion for next month's featured resource? Let us
know at [email protected].
December GNU Spotlight with Amin Bandali: Seventeen new GNU releases!
Seventeen new GNU releases in the last month (as of December 27,
2022):
For a full list with descriptions, please see:
https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/december-gnu-spotlight-with-amin-bandali-seventeen-new-gnu-releases
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 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.
This month, we welcome Bruno Haible as the new maintainer of GNU
libffcall. Bruno is a long-time GNU maintainer and developer with a
long list of contributions to many GNU packages. Welcome again,
Bruno, and many thanks for all of your work!
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.
As always, please feel free to write to me, [email protected],
with any GNUish questions or suggestions for future installments.
FSF and other free software events
- February 4-5, 2023, Brussels, FOSDEM
- March 9-12, 2023, Pasadena Convention Center, Pasadena, California, SCALE 20x
- March 18-19, 2023, Boston and online, LibrePlanet 2023: Charting the Course
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:
- Alessandro Vesely
- Boone Gorges
- Charlie Ebert
- Dave Chapman
- David Ignat
- David Lecompte
- Demo Agoris
- Devin Horvay
- Dock Williams
- Donald Craig
- Emin Martinian
- Fumitoshi Ukai
- Haru Kaneko
- Hideki Igarashi
- Inouye Satoru
- Jared Flatow
- Jean-Francois Blavier
- John Gilmore
- Kyle McCormick
- Laurie van Someren
- Marcus Pemer
- Mark Boenke
- McManus Family Fund at the Chicago Community Foundation
- Michael Lewis
- Michael Stroucken
- Morten Lind
- Nicodemus Paradiso
- Nicolas Avrutin
- Paul Cassella
- Pedro Brito
- Peter Kunze
- Portia Jones
- Robek Dirstein
- Rogers-Tanner Family Fund
- Shashank Sabniveesu
- Stephen Longfield
- Steve Tuyizere
- Steve Wickert
- Thomas Hahn
- Thomas Saglio
- Tobias Platen
- Uday Kale
- Walker Holahan
- William Hill Jr.
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:
- Arsen Arsenović (Texinfo, GNU Coreutils)
- Artem Kovalov (GNU Emacs)
- Asaf Fisher (GDB, GNU Binutils)
- Ilya Yurievich Chernyshov (GNU Emacs)
- Matt Trzcinski (GNU Emacs)
- Zachary Ryan Romero (GNU 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/2023/enero
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=c6337edd2eaf68b1a3719d96f5620763_1672806345_168
Le Free Software Supporter est disponible en français. Pour voir la
version française cliquez ici:
https://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter/2023/janvier
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=c6337edd2eaf68b1a3719d96f5620763_1672806345_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. 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 and take action on software
patents, Digital Restrictions
Management, free
software adoption,
OpenDocument,
and more.
Do you read and write Portuguese and English? The FSF is looking
for translators for the Free Software Supporter. Please send an
email to [email protected] with your interest and a list of your
experience and qualifications.
Copyright © 2023 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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