Free Software Supporter -- Issue 56, November 2012

Free Software Supporter

Issue 56, November 2012
Welcome to the Free Software Supporter, the Free Software Foundation's monthly news digest and action update -- being read by you and 64,307 other activists. That's 1,124 more than last month!
View this issue online here: http://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter/2012/free-software-supporter-issue-56-november-2012
Encourage your friends to subscribe and help us build an audience by adding our subscriber widget to your web site.

• Subscribe: http://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter
• Widget: http://www.fsf.org/associate/widget

Miss an issue? You can catch up on back issues at http://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter.

#

El Free Software Supporter está disponible en castellano. Para ver la versión en castellano haz click aqui: http://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter/2012/free-software-supporter-numero-56-noviembre-2012
Para cambiar las preferencias de usuario y recibir los próximos números del Supporter en castellano, haz click aquí: https://crm.fsf.org/civicrm/profile/create?gid=34&reset=1

TABLE OF CONTENTS

• Give freely this Cyber Monday: Introducing the 2012 Giving Guide
• Tell Amazon: Books and libraries shouldn't have a kill switch
• MediaGoblin crowdfunding campaign: huge success!
• Let's limit the effect of software patents, since we can't eliminate them
• Left wondering why VLC relicensed to LGPL
• Good "End Software Patents" video – not by us
• Finnish activist, Danish hacker share Nordic Free Software Award 2012
• LibreWRT: What we use for wifi at the FSF
• FSFE meeting the FSF crew in Boston
• Fall 2012: Photos from ICT Goes International, in Helsinki
• FSF to begin accepting scanned assignments from Germany
• Join the FSF and friends in updating the Free Software Directory
• LibrePlanet featured resource: 2013 LibrePlanet conference
• GNU Spotlight with Karl Berry: 22 new GNU releases!
• GNU Toolchain update
• Richard Stallman's speaking schedule
• Thank GNUs!
• Take action with the FSF

Give freely this Cyber Monday: Introducing the 2012 Giving Guide

From November 26th
Holiday shopping has begun! Unfortunately, most technology gifts are Trojan horses that will spy on their recipients, prevent them from doing what they want with their device, or maybe even block access to their favorite books or music.
The Free Software Foundation is proud to introduce the antidote: our 2012 Giving Guide. The Giving Guide features gifts that will not only make your recipients jump for joy, these gifts will also protect their user freedom.

• http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/give-freely-this-cyber-monday-introducing-the-2012-giving-guide

Go directly to the Giving Guide:

• http://www.fsf.org/givingguide

Or check out the Defective by Design blog post about the Giving Guide:

• http://www.defectivebydesign.org/node/2251?pk_campaign=112012Supporter&pk_kwd=GivingGuide

And our press release:

• http://www.fsf.org/news/free-software-foundation-encourages-shoppers-to-give-freely-with-new-giving-guide

Tell Amazon: Books and libraries shouldn't have a kill switch

From November 8th
Imagine if you came home and discovered all of your bookshelves ransacked, their contents nowhere to be found. That's what happened to Amazon customer Linn, but the bookshelves were digital. Read more and take action against Amazon's unfair use of DRM.

• http://www.defectivebydesign.org/node/2250?pk_campaign=112012Supporter&pk_kwd=Amazon

MediaGoblin crowdfunding campaign: huge success!

From November 12th
Chris Webber of MediaGoblin writes "This is no small accomplishment and we should feel proud of it... we deserve to feel proud of it!
"So you are probably wondering! What exactly did you all finance? How can you expect this set of money to be used? Well, let me tell you! Basically: you have bought a year (plus a couple bonus months, actually) of me working on MediaGoblin fulltime!"

• http://mediagoblin.org/news/we-did-it.html

Let's limit the effect of software patents, since we can't eliminate them

From November 2nd
In this WIRED article, Richard Stallman shares his radical proposal to end the crisis of software patents, writing "My suggestion is to change the effect of patents. We should legislate that developing, distributing, or running a program on generally used computing hardware does not constitute patent infringement."

• http://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/let-s-limit-the-effect-of-software-patents-since-we-can-t-eliminate-them

Here's the article on the WIRED website:

• http://www.wired.com/opinion/2012/11/richard-stallman-software-patents/

Here's a post from the End Software Patents campaign about RMS's article:

• http://news.swpat.org/2012/11/completely-shielding-software/

Left wondering why VLC relicensed to LGPL

From November 22nd
FSF board member Bradley Kuhn asks, "Do they want proprietary application interfaces that use their core libraries? If so, I'm left wondering why: VLC is already so popular that they could pull adopters toward software freedom by using the strong copyleft of GPL. It seems to me they're making a bad trade-off to get only marginally more popular by allowing some proprietary derivatives."

• http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/left-wondering-why-vlc-relicensed-some-code-to-lgpl

Good "End Software Patents" video –- not by us

From November 28th
There's a good anti-software-patent video on YouTube (in WebM video format). Despite the name it has no connection to the End Software Patents campaign, but it's a very good two-minute video explaining some of the problems of software patents.

• http://news.swpat.org/2012/11/good-end-software-patents-video-not-by-us/

To download the video directly without using YouTube's nonfree JavaScript, install youtube-dl and run this command:
youtube-dl "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkWPGwfuQcM&webm=1" -o EndSoftwarePatents.webm -f 45

Finnish activist, Danish hacker share Nordic Free Software Award 2012

From November 12th
With the Nordic Free Software award, given out for the 6th time this year, the Swedish Association for Free Software and Free Culture (FFKP, Föreningen Fri Kultur och Programvara) honors people and projects who have made important contributions to software freedom.

• http://fsfe.org/news/2012/news-20121112-01.en.html

LibreWRT: What we use for wifi at the FSF

From November 6th
Sysadmin Martin Dluhos would like to take a few moments to introduce Buffalo, the access point and router which provides network connectivity to portable computers in the FSF's office.

• http://www.fsf.org/blogs/sysadmin/librewrt-what-we-use-for-wifi-at-the-fsf

FSFE meeting the FSF crew in Boston

From October 30th
Matthias Kirschner of FSF Europe writes: "I like it when I have the opportunity to talk to people with whom I usually just write e-mails. So before my vacation, I made a side trip to visit some FSF activists in Boston."

• https://blogs.fsfe.org/mk/?p=1017

Fall 2012: Photos from ICT Goes International, in Helsinki

On November 6th, RMS was in Helsinki, Finland, at Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences to deliver a couple of speeches to some 250 teachers and students, including a how-to for beginning contributing to a free software project and doing a good job.

• http://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/20121106-helsinki

FSF to begin accepting scanned assignments from Germany

From November 15th
The FSF is pleased to announce that we can begin accepting scanned copyright assignments from contributors residing in Germany.

• http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/fsf-to-begin-accepting-scanned-assignments-from-germany

Join the FSF and friends in updating the Free Software Directory

From November 29th
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 irc.gnu.org, and usually include a handful of regulars as well as newcomers. Everyone's welcome.
The next meeting is Friday, December 7th from 2 PM to 5 PM EDT (19:00 to 22:00 UTC). Details here:

• http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/join-the-fsf-and-friends-in-updating-the-free-software-directory-10

After this meeting, check http://fsf.org/events for the rest of November's weekly meetings.

LibrePlanet featured resource: 2013 LibrePlanet conference

Every month on LibrePlanet, we highlight one resource that is interesting and useful -- often one that could use your help.
For this month, we are highlighting the page for the March 2013 LibrePlanet conference, a yearly gathering of the global free software community. Visit the page to stay up-to-date on conference details and make suggestions for lightning talks.

• http://libreplanet.org/wiki/LibrePlanet:Conference/2013

Do you have a suggestion for next month's featured resource? Let us know at campaigns@fsf.org.

GNU Spotlight with Karl Berry: 22 new GNU releases!

22 new GNU releases this month (as of November 27, 2012):

• autoconf-archive-2012.11.14
• gengetopt-2.22.6
• libzrtpcpp-2.3.2
• automake-1.12.5
• global-6.2.5
• parallel-20121122
• binutils-2.23.1
• gnunet-0.9.4
• pyconfigure-0.1
• bison-2.6.5
• gnunet-gtk-0.9.4
• sipwitch-1.4.0
• ccrtp-2.0.5
• gnutls-3.1.5
• solfege-3.20.7
• complexity-1.0
• libmicrohttpd-0.9.23
• ucommon-6.0.1
• ed-1.7
• librejs-4.9.2
• freeipmi-1.2.3
• libtasn1-3.1

To get announcements of most new GNU releases, subscribe to the info-gnu mailing list: http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/info-gnu. Nearly all GNU software is available from http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/, or preferably one of its mirrors (http://www.gnu.org/prep/ftp.html). You can use the url http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/ to be automatically redirected to a (hopefully) nearby and up-to-date mirror.
I'd like to specially mention the first release of GNU pyconfigure http://www.gnu.org/software/pyconfigure/, which provides developers using Python's setup.py for their package with ways to support the standard GNU configure && make installation method.
Another special mention for Ludovic Courtes for his new GNU package (system) Guix, http://www.gnu.org/software/guix/, going along with all his work on Guile.
We also welcome Dimitry Bogatov as the new maintainer of GNU Thales, Brian Lane and Phillip Susi as new co-maintainers of GNU parted, Hellekin and Daniel Reusche as new co-maintainers of GNU social, Fabio Gonzalez as the author and maintainer of the new GNU package fcrypt, and Paulo Cesar Pereira de Andrade as the new maintainer of GNU lightning.
A number of GNU packages, as well as the GNU operating system as a whole, are looking for maintainers and other assistance. Please see http://www.gnu.org/server/takeaction.html#unmaint if you'd like to help. The general page on how to help GNU is at http://www.gnu.org/help/help.html. To submit new packages to the GNU operating system, see http://www.gnu.org/help/evaluation.html.
As always, please feel free to write to me, karl@gnu.org, with any GNUish questions or suggestions for future installments.

GNU Toolchain update

From November 19th
The GNU toolchain refers to the part of the GNU system which is used for building programs. These components of GNU are together often on other systems and for compiling programs for other platforms.

• http://nickclifton.livejournal.com/12012.html

Richard Stallman's speaking schedule

For event details, as well as to sign-up to be notified for future events in your area, please visit .
So far, Richard Stallman has the following events in December and January:

• Dec 01, 2012, 05:30 PM, Goiânia, Brazil, "El software libre y tu libertad"
• Dec 11, 2012, 10:00 AM, Sao Carlos, Brazil, "A Free Digital Society"
• Dec 12, 2012, 02:00 PM, Sorocaba, Brazil, "Free Software and Your Freedom"
• Jan 17, 2013, 04:15 PM, Ann Arbor, MI, "A Free Digital Society"

Thank GNUs!

We appreciate everyone who donates to the Free Software Foundation, but we'd like to give special recognition to the folks who have donated $500 or more in the last month.

• http://www.gnu.org/thankgnus/2012supporters.html

This month, a big Thank GNU to:

• Chapman Shoop
• Trevor Spiteri
• Aaron Culich
• Peter Kunze
• Alessandro Vesely
• Colin Carr
• Neal Pawar
• Alison Chaiken
• Norman Richards
• Adam Klotblixt
• Jelte van der Hoek
• Ken Wong
• Boulder Labs, Inc.
• Aeva Palecek
• Sebastian Spaeth
• Nathan Yergler
• Jeffrey Moe

You can add your name to this list by donating at https://donate.fsf.org.

Take action with the FSF

Contributions from thousands of individual members enable the FSF's work. You can contribute by joining at http://www.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! http://www.fsf.org/jf?referrer=2442
The FSF is also always looking for volunteers (http://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 campaign section (http://www.fsf.org/campaigns) and take action on software patents, DRM, free software adoption, OpenDocument, RIAA and more.

Copyright © 2012 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/us/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.