The League for Programming Freedom, "an organization that opposes software patents and user interface copyrights" founded by Richard Stallman in 1989, is back and open for membership.

From their recent announcement:

We are pleased to announce the return of the League for Programming Freedom, the membership organization founded by Richard Stallman two decades ago to fight against software patents and user interface copyright. The LPF has been dormant since 1996, but we have completed all the legal paperwork necessary to exercise the full abilities of a 501(c)(4) non-profit tax-exempt corporation. Thanks to the stewardship of Treasurer Aubrey Jaffer, we have funds to get things going again.

Hi, my name is Tal Schechter, and I am the new campaigns intern at the FSF for the Fall of 2009. I am currently enrolled full-time at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, as a third-year student concentrating in science communication and ancient Jewish text scholarship. I have been playing with computers since my parents got an Apple II Classic in the early nineties. Questions of "Tal, why does this not work anymore?" were soon to follow. Finally, at 13, I broke away from Macs, with the first PC to enter the household. Both before and after the new PC, I had been going to computer camp, where I had first heard about Ubuntu, Gentoo, and other things people called "Linux."

An avid "Linux" user for some time, it was not until my first year of college that I encountered the concept of GNU/Linux and free software as different from open source. With the aid of the GLUG there, I learned about the importance of the user's freedoms. While I had been aware of the openness of the operating system I was using, it was not until I learned about the freedom aspects of free software that I was propelled into a proactive projection to convince other people that GNU/Linux is a better choice of operating system for them from moral, ethical, social, and economic standpoints.

At this point in time, I reach out to both avid computer users and to those who feel they don't know anything about computers, to try and educate them about the merits of using free software. As a person concentrating in science communication, I am concerned with the lack of lay explanations of free software. I hope that in my work as an intern at the FSF and beyond, I will help to explain the importance of user freedom to everyone, regardless of prior computer knowledge.

Even though sharing knowledge is one of the most basic principles of science, and even though much scientific research is funded by public institutions or universities, the vast majority of scientific papers end up in inaccessible troves controlled by private journals. AcaWiki is a brand new project to change that, using free sotfware and with freely licensed contributions.

From their announcement: "Currently, it can cost up to $35 to download an academic paper—a significant cost, especially because thorough research on any topic usually entails downloading many papers. AcaWiki’s approach takes advantage of the fact that copyright does not apply to ideas, only to the written expression of those ideas. Scholars can thus post summaries of their or others’ research online as long as they are not copying verbatim beyond what fair-use laws permit."

In other words, scholars can now access long, meticulously detailed summaries of the articles they're interested in. Summaries can be written by any community member with access to the original article, or by the original team of researchers themselves. Even if academics face strong incentives or requirements to publish in private journals, nothing in copyright law prohibits them from republishing a summary elsewhere.

AcaWiki is built on Semantic MediaWiki, which is free software available under the GNU GPL (it's the same software the FSF uses for LibrePlanet). But beyond just using free software, AcaWiki takes a free software approach: rather than waiting for journals make papers more available, they're organizing a community of experts to build a free equivalent that will be just as useful to students and scholars.

If you'd like to be an advocate for AcaWiki in your institution, or help summarize key papers in your field of expertise, get involved.

In a related story about people making progress against limits on the sharing of ideas, see the FSF's amicus brief in the Supreme Court "Bilski" case.

Xander has primarily been working on Valix, a new operating system with a simple and integrated approach. Working in assembler and C, he has begun creating an operating system that already has an integrated graphics system and a programming language in the works.

Initially, Xander didn't believe that his operating system would be welcomed by the FSF in fear that it would draw attention away from GNU/Linux. In fact, the opposite could be said! By creating a free operating system, Xander is drawing attention to the importance of having an operating system to use, study, and hack, especially one less massive and differently structured than the Linux kernel. Xander has documented Valix thoroughly on valix.co.nr so that the project is not only about his own exploration in writing an operating system, but also helping others explore doing the same. Xander has also been one of those people we can rely on to consistently be on IRC and contribute his knowledge.

Thank you to all the GNU Generation participants. It was not easy to select only one from such a great group of applications!

Also, if you are approximately aged 13-18, and would like to (or already do) contribute to free software, learn more about GNU Generation.

Dear Free Software Supporter,

Tomorrow we mark the end of our year-long celebration of the 25th anniversary of the GNU Project—a celebration that we kicked off in September 2008 with a wonderful video from author and comedian Stephen Fry.

Today, we celebrate the fact that we have passed 25,000 subscribers to our monthly newsletter, the Free Software Supporter, and we thank the 3,200 individuals who have joined the Free Software Foundation as Associate Members to fund our work. You can join their ranks now and become a proud card carrying member:

• Become an FSF Associate Member
• Give a gift of FSF Membership
• As a member use our widget to refer your friends
• Donate without membership

I am proud that the FSF has so many dedicated activists and members, who every day voice their support for our mission and advocate for a free society.

The free software movement has had an excellent year, and awareness of the ethical importance of free software is growing. Together, we are fighting the scourge of proprietary software, software patents, Digital Restrictions Management, and Treacherous Computing, in an effort to build a world of free software where we the users are free.

I could have made money [by joining the proprietary software world], and perhaps amused myself writing code. But I knew that at the end of my career, I would look back on years of building walls to divide people, and feel I had spent my life making the world a worse place. — Richard Stallman, the GNU Project.

Help us cap a succesful year for GNU by joining as a member or donating, and thank you for your continued support!

Peter and the Free Software Foundation team.

Translations: Arabic