UK Government chooses Open Document Format | Free Software Supporter - Issue 76, July 2014

Free Software Supporter Issue 76, July 2014 Welcome to the Free Software Supporter, the Free Software Foundation's monthly news digest and action update -- being read by you and 81,589 other activists. That's 1,228 more than last month! TABLE OF CONTENTS FSF congratulates UK Government on choosing Open Document Format Interview with Tox.im Introducing Tyler Livingston, a summer Licensing Team intern Tell the FCC: Net Neutrality is crucial to free software Seattle free software event this fall: Call for Participation now open Welcome Jessica Tallon, GNU MediaGoblin's second full-time hire European Commission distorts market by refusing to break free from lock-in LibrePlanet featured resource: Community toolkit GNU Spotlight with Karl Berry: 18 new GNU releases! GNU Toolchain Update Richard Stallman's speaking schedule and other FSF events Thank GNUs! Take action with the FSF! FSF congratulates UK Government on choosing Open Document Format From July 29th If you live in the UK, you'll soon be able to fill out government paperwork with your freedoms intact. The British government announced last week that Open Document Format (ODF), HTML, and PDF will be the official file formats used by all government agencies. https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/fsf-congratulates-uk-government-on-choosing-open-document-format Interview with Tox.im From July 21st In the latest installment of our Licensing and Compliance Lab's series on free software developers who choose GNU licenses for their works, we conducted an email-based interview with David Lohle from the Tox project, an all-in-one communication platform and protocol that ensures users full privacy and secure message delivery. https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/interview-with-tox Introducing Tyler Livingston, a summer Licensing Team intern From July 21st Tyler Livingston is one of the Licensing Team's summer interns. In this post he discusses the importance of free software and his personal interests. https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/introducing-summer-licensing-intern-tyler-livingston Tell the FCC: Net Neutrality is crucial to free software From July 14th Net neutrality, the principle that all traffic on the Internet should be treated equally, is crucial for free software's continued growth and success. The FCC has asked members of the public, along with industry leaders and entrepreneurs, to tell it why Internet Service Providers should be banned from traffic discrimination. https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/tell-the-fcc-net-neutrality-is-crucial-to-free-software Seattle free software event this fall: Call for Participation now open From July 1st The Seattle GNU/Linux Conference (SeaGL), a free software conference taking place on October 24 and 25, has just announced Karen Sandler, executive director of Software Freedom Conservancy, as a keynote speaker and opened its Call for Participation. https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/seagl-call-for-participation-now-open Welcome Jessica Tallon, GNU MediaGoblin's second full-time hire By Deb Nicholson and Chris Webber, from July 28th Jessica Tallon, who originally joined GNU MediaGoblin last year as part of the Outreach Program for Women, has recently been working on federation support in the project. http://mediagoblin.org/news/welcome-jessica-tallon.html European Commission distorts market by refusing to break free from lock-in By FSF Europe, from July 8th The European Commission has recently renewed its commitment to a proprietary desktop and secret file formats. The Commission is refusing to get serious about breaking free from vendor lock-in, and is ignoring all available alternatives. In doing so, the EU's civil service fails to practice what it preaches. https://fsfe.org/news/2014/news-20140708-01.en.html Join the FSF and friends in updating the Free Software Directory From July 30th 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, August 1 from 2pm to 5pm EDT (18:00 to 21:00 UTC). Details here: https://www.fsf.org/blogs/directory/friday-free-software-directory-irc-meetup-august-1 After this meeting, you can check https://www.fsf.org/events to see the rest of August's weekly meetings as they are scheduled. LibrePlanet featured resource: Community toolkit 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 our Community toolkit, which collects information about software that can be used by nonprofits, community groups, and individuals to advance the cause of free software. You are invited to adopt, spread and improve this important resource. https://libreplanet.org/wiki/Community_toolkit Do you have a suggestion for next month's featured resource? Let us know at campaigns@fsf.org. GNU Spotlight with Karl Berry: 18 new GNU releases! 18 new GNU releases in the last month (as of July 26, 2014): coreutils-8.23 cssc-1.4.0 datamash-1.0.5 denemo-1.1.6 emms-4.0 gcc-4.9.1 gettext-0.19.2 gforth-0.7.3 gnudos-1.3 gnuhealth-2.6.1 gnupg-1.4.18 gnupg-2.0.25 gsrc-2014.07.06 nano-2.3.6 parallel-20140722 ucommon-6.1.9 unifont-7.0.03 xorriso-1.3.8 To get announcements of most new GNU releases, subscribe to the info-gnu mailing list: https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/info-gnu. Nearly all GNU software is available from https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/, or preferably one of its mirrors (https://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. This month, we welcome Mose Giordano as a new co-maintainer of AUC-TeX, James Cloos as a new co-maintainer of a2ps (following his work on GNU enscript and trueprint), and Assaf Gordon as the author and maintainer of the new package datamash. Thanks to all. Also, please consider attending the GNU Hackers' Meeting https://www.gnu.org/ghm/, in Munich this year, August 15-17; attendance is gratis, but pre-registration is essential (and needs to be done immediately). 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. To submit new packages to the GNU operating system, see https://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 July 14th 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. This month features updates to binutils and GCC, including a new test coverage program called gcov-tool. https://nickclifton.livejournal.com/16681.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 https://www.fsf.org/events. So far, Richard Stallman has the following events in July: Aug 1, 2014, 3:00PM to 5:00PM, Bogota, Colombia, "El software libre en la ética y en la práctica" Other FSF and free software events Aug 15 to 17, 2014, Munich, Germany, GNU Hackers' Meeting Aug 19, 2014, 7:00PM to 8:30PM, Boston CiviCRM meetup -- August 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. https://www.gnu.org/thankgnus/2014supporters.html This month, a big Thank GNU to: Norman Richards Michael Henderson Zachary Tatum 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 https://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! https://www.fsf.org/jf?referrer=2442 The FSF is also always looking for volunteers (https://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 (https://www.fsf.org/campaigns) and take action on software patents, DRM, free software adoption, OpenDocument, RIAA and more. # Copyright © 2014 Free Software Foundation, Inc. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/.