Free Software Supporter Issue 85, May 2015
May 6, 2015 is the International Day Against DRM
The International Day Against DRM is on May 6th. On the same day across many countries, we will be meeting together and raising our voices against the unjust restrictions, control and surveillance that DRM imposes, and pointing the way to a future of empowerment for computer users. Will you join us at an event?
There are currently events scheduled in at least eight countries. You can see the full list of currently scheduled events here. We'll keep updating the list, so if you don't see an event in your area, check back closer to May 6th.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Hate DRM? Tell the world on May 6th
- The Licensing and Compliance Lab interviews Matt Lee from The List powered by Creative Commons
- DMCA exemption commenting process broken beyond repair
- Thousands of Spaniards leave Twitter for GNU social
- European digital single market: balancing copyright still not in the cards
- GNU Mailman 3.0 released
- Final PDFreaders advertisement squashing
- GCC 5 release series update
- A cautious welcome to the EC's new Free Software Strategy
- Join the FSF and friends in updating the Free Software Directory
- LibrePlanet featured resource: LibrePlanet 2015 Streaming
- GNU Spotlight with Brandon Invergo: Twenty-four new GNU releases!
- GNU Toolchain Update
- Richard Stallman's speaking schedule
- Other FSF and free software events
- Thank GNUs!
- GNU copyright contributions
- Take action with the FSF!
View this issue online here: https://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter/2015/may
Encourage your friends to subscribe and help us build an audience by adding our subscriber widget to your Web site.
- Subscribe: https://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter
- Widget: https://www.fsf.org/associate/widget
Miss an issue? You can catch up on back issues at https://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter.
El Free Software Supporter está disponible en español. Para ver la versión en español haz click aqui: https://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter/2015/mayo
**Para cambiar las preferencias de usuario y recibir los próximos números del Supporter en español, haz click aquí: https://crm.fsf.org/civicrm/profile/create?gid=34&reset=1
Le Free Software Supporter est disponible en français. Pour voir la version française cliquez ici: https://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter/2015/mai
Pour modifier vos préférences et recevoir les prochaines publications du Supporter en français, cliquez ici: https://crm.fsf.org/civicrm/profile/create?gid=34&reset=1
Hate DRM? Tell the world on May 6th
From April 24th
On May 6th, across the world we will be meeting together and raising our voices against the unjust restrictions, control, and surveillance that DRM imposes, and pointing the way to a future of empowerment for computer users. Will you join us at an event? There is currently events scheduled in at least 8 countries. You can see the full list of currently scheduled events on the LibrePlanet Wiki. If you don't see an event in your area, check back closer to May 6th, or add your own.
From April 10th
In the last year, we've seen DRM spread into more types of products, with Mozilla giving in to DRM in its Firefox Web browser and the media fawning over Apple's DRM-laden "smart" watch. But more people are waking up to DRM's oppressive effect every day, and the movement to regain control of our technology is growing. On Wednesday, May 6, 2015, our global community will come together for the ninth International Day Against DRM. We'll be gathering, protesting, making, and sharing, showing the world and the media that we insist on a future without DRM. We expect this to be one of the biggest, most diverse Days of action against DRM ever.
The Licensing and Compliance Lab interviews Matt Lee from The List powered by Creative Commons
From April 20th
This is the latest installment of our Licensing and Compliance Lab's series on free software developers who choose GNU licenses for their works. In this edition, we conducted an email-based interview with Matt Lee, a lead developer of The List, which is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License version 3 (AGPLv3), or at your option, any later version. Matt is the technical lead at Creative Commons.
DMCA exemption commenting process broken beyond repair
From April 14th
Every three years, supporters of user rights are forced to go through a Kafkaesque process fighting for exemptions from the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). In short, under the DMCA's rules, everything not permitted is forbidden. Unless we expend time and resources to protect and expand exemptions, users could be threatened with legal consequences for circumventing the digital restrictions management (DRM) on their own devices and software and could face criminal penalties for sharing tools that allow others to do the same. Exemptions don't fix the harm brought about by the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions, but they're the only crumbs Congress deigned to throw us when they tossed out our rights as users. But while we work to protect and expand user rights, other groups are fighting just as hard to dilute what little safety the exemptions process is meant to provide -- by opposing proposed exemptions.
Thousands of Spaniards leave Twitter for GNU social
From April 3rd, guest post by by Daniel Dianes, a Spanish free software activist
The cancellation or temporary suspension of various Spanish Twitter accounts has led to a huge migration of Spaniards to GNU social, a microblogging service designed to foster user freedom and control. This is an exciting win for federated online services.
European digital single market: balancing copyright still not in the cards
From April, April 29th
On April 20, 2015, published two working documents on the digital single market. These leaked documents reveal the Commission's upcoming strategy regarding all digital matters. Revising the IPRED directive, DRM, and interoperability are among the issues tackled. April regrets that once again, the proposals are highly insufficient to reform copyright, unlike the Reda report currently discussed in the European Parliament. Beyond the European single market, the document is especially interesting as it presents the main goals of the European Commission on all digital matters.
GNU Mailman 3.0 released
From the Mailman team, April 28th
We are very happy to announce the release of GNU Mailman 3.0. Over seven years in development, Mailman 3 represents a major new version, redesigned as a suite of cooperating components which can be used to mix and match however you want. The core engine is now backed by a relational database and exposes its functionality to other components via an administrative REST+JSON API.
Final PDFreaders advertisement squashing
From Matthias Kirschner, FSFE, April 23rd
FSFE is wrapping up its PDFreaders campaign, and they need your help to measure its success. Started in 2009, the campaign goal was to get rid of advertisements for proprietary PDF readers. They focused on the Web sites of public administrations, and many people helped gather contact details for over 2000 public Web sites which advertised nonfree software. Many people helped. 772 of the 2110 bugs were fixed, a 36% success rate. They need your help now to make one final round of checks, so they are looking for volunteers who can help check Web sites in their native language.
GCC 5 release series update
From April 22nd
The GNU project and the GCC developers are pleased to announce the release of GCC 5.1. This release is a major release, containing new features (as well as many other improvements) relative to GCC 4.9.x.
A cautious welcome to the EC's new Free Software Strategy
FSFE and April comment on the European Commission's updated strategy for the internal use of free software. Read about their cautious welcome and call for concrete action.
- https://fsfe.org/news/2015/news-20150401-01.en.html
- https://www.april.org/en/european-commission-reinforces-its-strategy-free-software-now-lets-see-some-action
Join the FSF and friends in updating the Free Software Directory
From April 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, May 1 from 2pm to 5pm EDT (18:00 to 21:00 UTC). Details here:
After this meeting, you can check https://www.fsf.org/events to see the rest of this month's weekly meetings as they are scheduled.
LibrePlanet featured resource: LibrePlanet 2015 Streaming
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 LibrePlanet:Conference/2015/Streaming, which documents the livestream project for the 2015 LibrePlanet conference. The FSF tech team and LibrePlanet volunteer George Chriss made this year's livestream a big success, with hundreds of people watching sessions remotely throughout. Here, they share their process, including equipment, software, setup, and plans for next year. Use this resource when planning your own free software-based livestream.
Do you have a suggestion for next month's featured resource? Let us know at campaigns@fsf.org.
GNU Spotlight with Brandon Invergo: Twenty-four new GNU releases!
24 new GNU releases in the last month (as of April 24, 2015):
- apl-1.5
- ccrtp-2.1.2
- ccscript-5.0.5
- dejagnu-1.5.3
- ed-1.11
- emacs-24.5
- gcc-5.1.0
- global-6.4
- gnucash-2.6.6
- gnumach-1.5
- gnutls-3.4.0
- hurd-0.6
- icecat-31.6.0-gnu1
- libmicrohttpd-0.9.40
- libtasn1-4.4
- linux-libre-4.0-gnu
- mig-1.5
- nano-2.4.1
- nettle-3.1
- ocrad-0.25
- parallel-20150422
- sipwitch-1.9.7
- source-highlight-3.1.8
- ucommon-6.3.1
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 from https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/, or preferably one of its mirrors from https://www.gnu.org/prep/ftp.html. You can use the url https://ftpmirror.gnu.org/ to be automatically redirected to a (hopefully) nearby and up-to-date mirror.
This month, we welcome Ruben Rodriguez as a new co-maintainer of GNU LibreJS.
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.
If you have a working or partly working program that you'd like to offer to the GNU Project as a GNU package, see https://www.gnu.org/help/evaluation.html.
As always, please feel free to write to us, maintainers@gnu.org, with any GNUish questions or suggestions for future installments.
GNU Toolchain update
From April 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.
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 this month:
- May 12, 2015, 18:00, Brest, France, "Logiciels libres et l'éducation"
- May 14, 2015, 14:00, Lyon, France, "Computing, freedom, and privacy"
Other FSF and free software events
- May 6, 2015, worldwide, International Day Against DRM
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.
This month, a big Thank GNU to:
- Rick and Betsy Bronson
- Sam Halliday
- Alan Shutko
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 GPL and keep software free. The following individuals have assigned their copyright to the FSF in the past month:
- Jorge A. Alfaro-Murillo (emacs & auctex)
- Satyam Zode (wget)
- Jiri Gaisler (gdb)
Want to see your name on this list? Contribute to GNU and assign your copyright to the FSF.
https://www.gnu.org/server/takeaction.html#dev
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/join
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 © 2015 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/.
Read this in Spanish: https://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter/2015/mayo Read this in French: https://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter/2015/mai