The LibrePlanet event was a huge success, and a great launch for our community activities at LibrePlanet.org. LibrePlanet featured a jam-packed schedule including a full day of speakers on Saturday and an Open Space Conference on Sunday. 

The keynote on Saturday morning was provided by Samba's Jeremy Allison and was entitled, "The Elephant in the Room: Microsoft and Free Software". A great talk that gave us all a new perspective on Microsoft:)

We got lots of great feedback from folks who attended. Some people were new and hadn't realized just how many different projects and facets there were to the free software movement. Others have been running GNU/Linux for a number of years, but didn't know about the vigorous effort to replace Flash with a free alternative called Gnash. Rob Savoye (lead Maintainer of the Gnash project) was an energetic and inspiring speaker -- he let us know that he's not content to have a merely workable alternative. Gnash is more interoperable and has stronger security than the proprietary Adobe application it replaces.

Likewise, many people were vaguely aware that free software is widely used in Latin America, but hearing about mandated and supported government use was news to many. Alexandre Oliva spoke at length about Free Software Foundation Latin America (FSFLA) and Ryan Bagueros shared his stories about free software support in remote villages and free software using communities in Brazil.

There was certainly some lively conversation between participants as we wondered what parts of free software's success we could emulate in our own countries and what parts were encouraging, but just not applicable. 

Alexandre Oliva gave an impassioned talk about the work being done to remove non-free binary blobs and firmware from the kernel Linux and his efforts to create a free kernel across multiple distributions:

Also keynoting were Evan Prodromou of identi.ca and Ciaran O'Riordan director of the End Software Patents Project, who spoke about the coming launch of http://en.swpat.org.  The first day of the conference ended with FSF President Richard Stallman presenting the annual free software awards.

The second day was even more participatory and a bit of a whirlwind. Take a look at all the topics we ended up covering. Kat Walsh from the Wikimedia Foundation brought the audience to its feet with a rendition of Richard Stallman's Free Software Song, played on a recorder:

The LibrePlanet Activism track had several discussions about software freedom and libraries -- it turns out that there are at least three distinct issues; whether archival material is scanned into the system using a free format that can be accessed by anyone, the absence of DRM in digital lending materials and the sort of software that is running on the public terminals.

We also had lots of great ideas about freeing network services, ranging from social networking and music sharing to free webmail and free hosting.

But we didn't just talk about free software, we also covered an awful lot of ground on the subject of hardware. Marc Jones talked about Coreboot, which is the quest for a free bios and our own John Sullivan demo'ed Open Moko's FreeRunner which is a phone that enables the user to run all free software. And I know that more than one person left Libre Planet knowing that their next camera will just have to be one from Elphel, makers of high-performance, free software cameras with open hardware.

Last but not certainly not least, while all this talking was going on, one room housed a much quieter group who were busy writing a book. The crew from FLOSS Manuals were running a text book sprint with on-site and remote contributors all weekend.  They produced an amazing text book titled Introduction to the Command Line, aimed at GNU/Linux gnubies. The book is available now for reading or download on the FLOSS Manuals website or you can help us fund the next book sprint by buying a printed copy.

Thanks to all our speakers, tireless volunteers and everyone who attended and made this weekend a very successful first LibrePlanet event! I bet you're thinking, "It couldn't have been that perfect..." and not only are you right, we want to hear from everyone who attended how we can make next year even better. Go ahead, tell us what you thought.

Our annual meeting has now officially morphed into the LibrePlanet event. The date is set. March 21st and 22nd — that's right, two whole days! LibrePlanet will be at the Harvard Science Center, right in Harvard Square on the MBTA's red line.

LibrePlanet will cover a range of free software activism topics, with an Open Space style effort to make progress on engineering for Free Network Services and the High Priority Software Projects.

LibrePlanet attendance is free to FSF associate members, with non-members who are committed to the ideals of software freedom paying a conference fee to cover breakfast and lunch for two days.  Of course once they've spent the whole weekend with our members, we're pretty sure the new folks will also want to support our work.

Here's the basic schedule for LibrePlanet so you can start making travel arrangements:

Saturday, March 21st

• 9:30-5:00 -- Keynotes include: High Priority Free Software Projects; Freedom for Network Services; LibrePlanet Activism Network; Software Patents.
  
• 6:00-9:00 -- Social Event: LibrePlanet Party!
  

Sunday, March 22nd

• 9:30-5:00 -- Keynote  followed by Open Space-style conference

This will be a working conference, so please bring a laptop. Participation is not limited to coders and activists; we'll also need folks who can do visual design, write and edit text, and are willing to test-drive stuff or percolate ideas. Basically, everyone!

Background and details

Alongside our 2008 member meeting, the FSF helped launch the autonomo.us working group, convened as an independent advisory group of hackers and activists concerned about the effects of network services on user freedom.

As part of this year's meeting, we will be coordinating an Open Space style conference focused on making tangible progress in the area of network services. Several autonomo.us members will be in attendance to help lead talks and participate in working groups, including Evan Prodromou, Benjamin Mako Hill, Henri Poole, Bradley Kuhn, and Mike Linksvayer.

Please join us as we take the next big step in answering the key questions: How do we engineer for free network services? What components do we need to build first? What should the free software community do to promote a culture of free network services?

1. By March 14th, please RSVP to membership@fsf.org ; Space is limited. If you're coming we will need to save you a spot and make sure you get a bagel each morning.
   
2. Forward this to friends and colleagues that you think would really enjoy a weekend hacking for freedom.
   
3. Visit the LibrePlanet 2009 wiki to start finding a ride and accomodation, and work with other attendees who are making plans for the conference.

Cheers,
Deborah Nicholson
Membership Coordinator

Image by Jacobolus at Wikimedia Commons. CC-BY-SA.

Posting the FSF widget on your website is a fairly simple thing to do, but it turns out that it's very effective! We've already gotten 24 new members during our year-end drive through member referrals that came in through widgets. The widgets have been posted by free software supporters all over the world -- from Chicago to Italy to South Africa.

So far, one hundred and thirty-four of our members have helped us sign up one or more new members. All those people add up to give us the membership support we need to keep fighting to protect free software and to keep pushing for software development in key areas. Stefano Maffulli has brought in three new members and Richard Johnson's has brought in four. Thanks guys!

We also want thank those of you who are forwarding our year-end campaign link to your co-workers or your usergroup mailing list. We know who you are and we appreciate the time that you're taking out of this insanely busy season to lend a hand to the FSF.

Lastly, if you've approached your free software friendly employer about writing out a check to the FSF and made the case that our work enables your business to be free of proprietary vendors, we are eternally grateful to you as well. If it were up to me, you'd get a bonus this year!

It's no secret that any budget item that isn't going onto your plate or over your head (like a roof) could be seen as "pencilled in" in this economy. We know that freedom isn't precisely edible, so we are very grateful to our members who are not only sticking with us during these lean times, but continue passing the word along to friends and neighbors.

Want to help us reach our goal of 750 new members by January 31st?

• Put the widget on your website or blog.
• Forward the info about FSF membership to your co-workers or mailing lists, asking them to join.
  
• Talk to your employer about becoming an FSF Patron
  

Got any other ideas? Drop us a line!

Take a look! The new ultra slim credit card-sized FSF membership USB cards have arrived. Of course member number 0 had to be for our founder and president Richard Stallman...

Loaded with gNewSense Live!, they are shipping out to members first thing in January 2009 (production problems have caused us a delay). Each card includes a member user name and member number and on the back displays an extract from the free software definition. We've also included some exciting advocacy tools, like speeches from Richard Stallman and videos about free software. Since the card fits right in your wallet alongside your credit cards, you can take the message of software freedom with you everywhere you go.

Another batch of member cards will be on order soon, so if you haven't done already make sure you're signed up to receive your card in round two (you can check on your membership here.) Brand-new members also receive the bootable membership card automatically, so if you've been thinking about joining, now is a great time!

If you have any questions about the membership cards, just email me.

It's Saturday morning and not *too* terribly early. Sixty free software activists start arriving at Encuentro 5, reviving with coffee and getting ready to celebrate Software Freedom Day in Boston.

We began with an eye-opening keynote from Aaron Swartz, Watchdog.net

He pointed out how our taxes pay to maintain governmental records and databases and yet citizens who want to read these materials are often thwarted by red tape and fees -- fees for digital information which, as we all know, should be nearly cost-free to duplicate. He's been using free software to make government records and other public domain material easily available and searchable by the public. He implored us to all call him, if we want to help, but I'm pretty sure email works too.

Next we broke out for workshops. One track was dedicated to free software graphics tools. Mairin Duffy lead us off with a "dive right in" overview on how to use GIMP, and Inkscape to create all sorts of fabulous looking posters and graphics. Next up was Bassam Kundali, an animation artist, who's been using Blender to make short movies. Running concurrently, the Plone workshop had a particularly heavy FSF staff presence since we use Plone for our websites. Nate Aune and Aaron Van Derlip covered a good bit of ground, including Plone's high security ratings and how to start building a Plone site from scratch. Following that presentation board member, Mako Hill, and FSF manager of operations, John Sullivan explained how anyone could hack a digital camera or tweak the Freerunner from OpenMoko.

We broke for lunch and multi-player Frozen Bubble. Dessert was an excellent and mammoth cake made by Sarah Abbott. More than one person went back for a second piece as we settled down to watch the Fry video. Campaigns manager, Joshua Gay updated the crowd on some of our newest work; including our campaign to End Software Patent Abuse.

While we wheeled through a series of Lightning Talks (6 minute presentations, scheduled the day of the event) on everything from a formal math commons to free software at law schools, we were treated to a surprise appearance by RMS. It seems his travel plans had changed at the last minute and so the founder of the GNU project was able to come by and address the crowd. He exhorted us to think of the GNU project's 25 year history as a foundation for the work to come and encouraged people to keep pushing for a completely free system. Of course, the best way to do that would be to hack on one of the High Priority Projects listed here.

Thanks to everyone who participated and see you next year!