|
Please consider adding [email protected] to your address book, which
will ensure that our messages reach you and not your spam box.
Read and share online: https://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter/2023/february
Welcome to the Free Software Supporter, the Free Software
Foundation's (FSF) monthly news digest and action update -- being read
by you and 230,483 other activists.
Associate members are invited: Nominate new candidates to the FSF board
From January 19
Associate members of the FSF now have the chance to nominate
candidates to serve on the board of directors. This news comes after
an original announcement of the process by the FSF board of directors
last year on January 18, 2022. We're inviting all current associate
members to participate in this important work. FSF board nominations
are now open until March 3, 2023, 10:00 EST (15:00 UTC) through an
online nomination form.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Thank you and a very warm welcome to our new members
- FSF board adopts updated by-laws to protect copyleft
- Join LibrePlanet 2023 behind the scenes as a volunteer
- Software freedom in education advocate Erin Rose Glass to keynote FSF's LibrePlanet
- Sharing knowledge about the GNU family of licenses
- The European Union's proposed CE mark for software could have dire impact on free software
- Right to Repair advocates have had good victories: We have to keep fighting
- The lights have been on at a Massachusetts school for over a year because no one can turn them off
- January GNU Emacs news
- Join the FSF and friends in updating the Free Software Directory
- LibrePlanet featured resource: LibrePlanet 2023 Birds of a Feather sessions
- January GNU Spotlight with Amin Bandali: Nineteen 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/february
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 or Spanish.
Thank you and a very warm welcome to our new members
From January 25
January 20, 2023 marked the end of our most recent fundraising
campaign and associate member drive. We are proud to add 330 new
associate members to our organization, and we have immense
appreciation for the community that helped us get there. FSF program
manager Miriam Bastian tells us the highlights of this year's
fundraiser as well as how we can all stay involved in the fight for
freedom year-round.
FSF board adopts updated by-laws to protect copyleft
From January 24
The board of the FSF announced it has adopted updated by-laws, which
go into effect February 1, 2023. The update to the by-laws most
importantly enacts a strengthened approval process for drafting and
publishing licenses by the FSF. It also formalizes the union staff
seat that was introduced on March 21, 2021 and makes various minor
improvements to the text. This is part of the preparations for the
process of expanding the board. You are encouraged to read the details
of this important update.
Join LibrePlanet 2023 behind the scenes as a volunteer
From January 20
LibrePlanet 2023 is coming very soon and we need your help to make the
world's premier gathering of free software enthusiasts a
success. LibrePlanet 2023 will be held March 18-19, 2023 both online
and in person in Boston, MA. It will be the fifteenth edition of the
conference that brings free software advocates together from around
the globe, and you can be an important part of this celebration. Read
the article to learn how you can volunteer for as much or as little
time as you like while receiving a very handsome LibrePlanet 2023
shirt in your size, free admission to the entire conference and lunch,
and the community's eternal gratitude.
Software freedom in education advocate Erin Rose Glass to keynote FSF's LibrePlanet
From January 12
We are proud to announce Erin Rose Glass as our first keynote for
LibrePlanet 2023! Glass is a researcher and educator who encourages
the use of ethical technology that puts user freedom and community
values front and center. She believes that students should have the
opportunity to learn with free software. Otherwise, in her words, they
"leave the classroom having missed the opportunity to know and
experience ethical forms of software practice, leaving them ill
prepared to face our current technological political challenges." We
expect LibrePlanet visitors will be genuinely interested to hear her
experiences, and we look forward to having Glass keynote as her work
fits so perfectly with this year's theme: "Charting the Course."
Sharing knowledge about the GNU family of licenses
From January 6
Copyright and licensing associate Craig Topham discusses the work done
by the Licensing and Compliance Lab to answer licensing questions via
articles, the FAQ, and email. The Licensing and Compliance Lab,
otherwise known as "the Lab," is comprised of staff and volunteers
dedicated to tackling licensing issues, which can sometimes be quite
unique and challenging. Topham's article thanks all the volunteers for
their skills, and for their critical contribution to
software freedom. The article offers insight into how the Lab
operates, its work for the larger community, and what you can do to
support its growth and longevity.
The European Union's proposed CE mark for software could have dire impact on free software
From January 24 by Tim Anderson
The European Union's (EU) proposed Cyber Resilience Act (CRA), if
passed, could have severe unintended consequences for free
software. While the CRA aims to ensure the security and quality of an
array of "products" available in the European market, it would require
software to undergo rigorous assessments and audits. Such assessments,
experts say, would place an undue burden on free software developers,
who often work on software outside of organizations that are able to
conduct or fund such audits. Additionally, there is much free software
that plays a role, which seemingly under the proposed CRA, would be
described as "critical." Such software, which could include anything
from cryptography to the operating system running on a desktop, phone,
or router, may become highly regulated, adding additional burdens to
free software developers who, while being experts in digital security
themselves, may otherwise not have access to the resources necessary
to comply with the regulation.
Right to Repair advocates have had good victories: We have to keep fighting
From January 20 by Hayley Tsukayama
2022 had some major victories for the Right to Repair movement,
including a Colorado law to allow wheelchair users access to resources
they need to fix their own chairs. However, there were also setbacks,
such as last-minute changes, made at the insistence of lobbyists, to a
New York law passed at the end of the year. Because of a battery of
targeted lobbying on New York Governor Kathy Hochul, the law, as it
passed, is much weaker than it was introduced. This article sheds
light on such efforts by corporate interests to weaken our (Right to
Repair)[https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/fight-to-repair] and why we must
remain vigilant, even as some progress is made.
The lights have been on at a Massachusetts school for over a year because no one can turn them off
From January 19 by Corky Siemaszko
For nearly a year and a half, a Massachusetts high school has been lit
up around the clock because the district can't turn off the roughly
7,000 lights in the sprawling building. It turns out that the software
that runs the lights failed over a year ago on August 24, 2021. The
article by NBC and an earlier article by the school's news site detail
how they tried to fix it only to find that they could not. This is
because the company they hired to install the system had changed
hands, and now the company, they learned, "no longer has any of that
information. They don't have the software. The old information is
proprietary" and, now, "it's unavailable."
Unfortunately, the NBC article is written in a way that focuses much
of the blame on supply chain disruption, ending with "we made a deal
with the devil by moving the factories to China." However, if they had
started with free software, the school would have had the freedoms
they need to solve the issue without any new hardware. Thus, the "deal
with the devil" by those involved in building the school is the deal
they made by entering the proprietary license agreement, which has
been verified by FSF staff as a mix of proprietary and free licenses.
January GNU Emacs news
From January 30 by Sacha Chua
In these issues: "Mastering Emacs" book club, help wanted for
maintaining various packages, Dvorak keybinding for meow setup,
beautify markdown, 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, February 3 from 12:00 to 15:00 EST (17:00 to
20:00 UTC). Details here:
LibrePlanet featured resource: LibrePlanet 2023 Birds of a Feather sessions
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 LibrePlanet 2023 Birds of a
Feather (BoF) sessions, which provides information about how to
propose and organize your very own BoF session for the upcoming
conference. 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].
January GNU Spotlight with Amin Bandali: Nineteen new GNU releases!
Nineteen new GNU releases in the last month (as of January 30, 2023):
For a full list with descriptions, please see: https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/january-gnu-spotlight-with-amin-bandali-nineteen-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 back Bruno Haible as co-maintainer of GNU
gettext, GNU libunistring, and GNU libiconv, in addition to other GNU
packages. Many thanks for your work on all of these packages and for
taking up their maintenance again, Bruno!
A number of GNU packages, as well as the GNU operating system as a
whole, are looking for maintainers and other assistance. If you'd like
to help, please see
https://www.gnu.org/server/takeaction.html#unmaint. 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, please see
https://www.gnu.org/help/evaluation.html.
As always, please feel free to write to me at [email protected] with
any GNUish questions or suggestions for future installments.
FSF and other free software events
- February 4-5, 2023, Brussels, Belgium FOSDEM
- February 10-12, 2023, Calicut, India FOSSMeet'23
- March 9-12, 2023, Pasadena Convention Center, Pasadena, CA, SCALE 20x
- March 18-19, 2023, Boston and online, LibrePlanet 2023: Charting the Course
- July 13-16, 2023, Oregon Convention Center, Portland, OR FOSSY
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:
- Alex Wang
- Ken Senoo
- Michael Henderson
- Simon Josefsson
- Simon Pugnaghi
- Will Butler
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:
- Aimé Bertrand (GNU Emacs)
- Alf Fredrik Salomonsson (GNU Emacs)
- Dimitri Belopopsky (GNU Emacs)
- Graham Marlow (GNU Emacs)
- Jacob First (GNU Emacs)
- Joel Pettersson (GNU Emacs)
- Peter Stiernström (GNU Emacs)
- Wilhelm Hugo Kirschbaum (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 click aquí:
https://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter/2023/febrero
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=5498ca2496aa291a63a97b1866118f37_1675306698_168
Le Free Software Supporter est disponible en français. Pour voir la
version française cliquez ici:
https://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter/2023/fevrier
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=5498ca2496aa291a63a97b1866118f37_1675306698_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/.
|
