Saturday, June 30, 2012

Free Software Supporter -- Issue 51, June 2012

Free Software Supporter

Issue 51, June 2012

Welcome to the Free Software Supporter, the Free Software Foundation's monthly news digest and action update -- being read by you and 58,193 other activists. That's 805 more than last month!

Encourage your friends to subscribe and help us build an audience by adding our subscriber widget to your web site.

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

Multilingual? Send translations of the Supporter to campaigns@fsf.org.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

  • URGENT: Kill ACTA
  • Stop software patents in Europe
  • Two job openings on the FSF campaigns team
  • FSF recommendations for free operating system distributions considering Secure Boot
  • GNU GPLv3 turns 5
  • Dear Microsoft: fsf.org is not a "gambling site"
  • FSF's new operations assistant
  • Emacs Reference mugs are back!
  • I have some big shoes to fill
  • Introducing our new copyright and licensing associate
  • World IPv6 Day
  • April 2012 Trip to Tunisia: Photos from Tunis and Monastir
  • Why games matter to free software and free culture
  • LibrePlanet featured resource: Defective by Design
  • GNU spotlight with Karl Berry
  • Richard Stallman's speaking schedule and other FSF events
  • Thank GNUs!
  • Take action with the FSF!

URGENT: Kill ACTA (2012-06-30)

On June 25th, the European Union Parliamentary committee voted to reject the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA). This signifies a major blow to ACTA, but its standing in the EU still comes down to the European Parliament vote scheduled for July 4th.

Help kill ACTA once and (hopefully) for all! Contact Members of European Parliament today.

Stop software patents in Europe (2012-06-28)

The European Parliament will vote on July 4th 2012 for a regulation on the unitary patent. This project could introduce software patents in Europe.

April, which promotes and defend Free Software in France and Europe, is proposing a set of amendments aiming to bring a legal certainty to the regulation and to fix the political issue of the governance of the European patent system.

You can help by calling Members of the European Parliaments (MEPs) in order for them to vote these amendments.

Two job openings on the FSF campaigns team

The Free Software Foundation (FSF), a Massachusetts 501(c)(3) charity with a worldwide mission to protect freedoms critical to the computer-using public, seeks two motivated and organized tech-friendly Boston-based individuals to be its full-time campaigns managers.

Applications must be received by Monday, July 23rd, 2012.

FSF recommendations for free operating system distributions considering Secure Boot (2012-06-30)

We have been working hard the last several months to stop Restricted Boot, a major threat to user freedom, free software ideals, and free software adoption. Under the guise of security, a computer afflicted with Restricted Boot refuses to boot any operating systems other than the ones the computer distributor has approved in advance. Restricted Boot takes control of the computer away from the user and puts it in the hands of someone else. This is distinct from Secure Boot, where the user has full control over the system.

Recently, two popular GNU/Linux distributions have announced their plans to support Secure Boot. In this article, we review their plans, and lay out our current strategy for addressing the threats and difficulties posed by this new technology for the free software movement. We find any approach that requires users to trust Microsoft or any proprietary software company unacceptable, and urge distributions to pursue other solutions.

GNU GPLv3 turns 5 (2012-06-29)

The GNU General Public License version 3 turns five; Eben Moglen states, "GPLv3 anticipated the issues of today and will help us deal with the challenges of tomorrow."

Dear Microsoft: fsf.org is not a "gambling site" (2012-06-22)

We strongly suggest you avoid using proprietary "network security" software from Microsoft. If you need to provide evidence to someone else to illustrate why using such software is a bad idea, feel free to use us as an example. If your workplace uses the software currently, please point to this post and ask them to drop it. Proprietary security software is an oxymoron -- if the user is not fundamentally in control of the software, the user has no security.

If Microsoft's "reputation" database can't tell the difference between a gambling site and an independently audited registered nonprofit public-interest charity founded almost 30 years ago, it is certainly doing you and your business more harm than good.

FSF's new operations assistant (2012-06-30)

Hello, I'm Chrissie Himes, the new operations assistant, and I'm excited to officially be with the Free Software Foundation. I handle sales, donations, and general office operations. I came to free software via my interest, or rather, my frustration with the music industry.

Emacs Reference mugs are back! (2012-06-21)

The GNU Emacs Reference mugs are back! These ceramic mugs feature a two-color Emacs logo as well as a handy Emacs quick-reference guide. Like our Emacs Reference cards, these mugs feature all the commands needed to dive right into using Emacs.

Also, we have version 24 of the Emacs Manual coming out in print later this summer. To make room we've discounted our older editions, version 22 and version 23.3, to $15 and $30, respectively.

I have some big shoes to fill (2012-06-12)

Joshua Gay is the new licensing and compliance manager at the FSF.

I'm sad to announce that I will no longer be able to work alongside Brett Smith, who served as the FSF's licensing and compliance engineer since 2007, but whom I first worked with at the FSF a decade ago when we both were interns for a summer. Brett has moved on to work with the World Wide Web Consortium and we wish him the best of luck! And, I hope you will all wish me the best of luck as I am changing roles here at the FSF. I am moving from campaigns manager to the newly re-branded, "licensing and compliance manager."

Introducing our new copyright and licensing associate (2012-06-12)

Donald Robertson, III is the new copyright and licensing associate at the FSF.

My time at the Free Software Foundation over the past year and a half has been split between handling copyright assignments and running general office operations. Handling contracts with large corporations and shipping packages of stickers and t-shirts was always sort of an odd pairing for me. This was never an ideal situation, but rather the result of us trying to do as much as we could with our resources. During our winter fundraiser this past year, we asked you to help us do more. Happily, the community took up this challenge and entrusted us with more resources to better aid free software.

World IPv6 Day (2012-06-06)

June 6th, 2012 was World IPv6 Day. The most important GNU/FSF sites are available on native IPv6.

The FSF and the GNU project participated. Some of our most important services have been available on native IPv6 for a few months now.

April 2012 Trip to Tunisia: Photos from Tunis and Monastir (2012-06-05)

RMS was in Tunisia in late April and early May. Here are some photographic excerpts.

Why games matter to free software and free culture

FSF member, GNU MediaGoblin maintainer and Liberated Pixel Cup organizer Chris Webber writes on the importance of games in free software, discussing everything from his personal motivations, to the disturbing increase of proprietary and DRM-laden games and game platforms targeting GNU/Linux.

LibrePlanet featured resource: Defective by Design

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 Defective by Design group, which is a place for supporters of our campaign against DRM to share materials they've created and participate in shaping new campaign actions. Please stop by and help the fight against DRM -- especially on ebooks!

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

GNU Spotlight with Karl Berry

New GNU releases as of June 26, 2012:

autogen-5.16.1 automake-1.12.1 bison-2.5.1 ddrescue-1.16 denemo-0.9.4 emacs-24.1 gcc-4.7.1 glibc-2.16 gnuhealth-1.6.2 gnunet-0.9.3 gnutls-2.12.20 gnutls-3.0.20 gworkspace-0.9.1 gzip-1.5 help2man-1.40.10 icecat-12.0 libmicrohttpd-0.9.20 librejs-4.7.1 libtasn1-2.13 octave-3.6.2 parallel-20120622 rcs-5.8.1 solfege-3.20.6 tramp-2.2.5

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.

Several GNU packages 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 GNU, 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.

Richard Stallman's speaking schedule and other events

For event details, as well as to sign-up to be notified for future events in your area, please visit .

Richard Stallman has the following events in July:

Another event we'd like to draw your attention to is the 13th Libre Software Meeting, in Geneva, Switzerland on July 7th. LSM is a non-commercial cycle of conferences, round tables and practical workshops based on Libre Software and its uses. Its aim is to provide a platform for Libre Software users, developers and stakeholders.

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:

  • Christopher Webber
  • Vivekanand Maddali
  • Robert L. McDonald
  • Jean-Christophe Vaugeois
  • Douglas Hauge

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.


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Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Your group membership has been activated

Welcome. You are now in the "Free Software Supporters" group. Unless you weren't expecting this message, you don't need to do anything. If you didn't expect this message, email us at info@fsf.org and we'll help you out.
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Thursday, May 31, 2012

Free Software Supporter -- Issue 50, May 2012

Free Software Supporter

Issue 50, May 2012

Welcome to the Free Software Supporter, the Free Software Foundation's monthly news digest and action update -- being read by you and 57,338 other activists. That's 1,039 more than last month!

Encourage your friends to subscribe and help us build an audience by adding our subscriber widget to your web site.

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

Multilingual? Send translations of the Supporter to campaigns@fsf.org.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

  • FSF statement on jury's partial verdict in Oracle v Google
  • Diablo 3 DRM: "It's really an online game without a monthly fee"
  • Publishers and activists come together to say NO to DRM on ebooks
  • New items in the guide to DRM-free living
  • Nonfree DRM'd Games on GNU/Linux: Good or Bad?
  • Call on the new French president to "Stop software patents"
  • Richard Stallman: Photos from Madrid
  • Richard Stallman: In Singapore
  • GNU Emacs Reference mugs -- all gone!
  • Conservancy projects launch coordinated compliance efforts
  • LibrePlanet featured resource: Gaming Collective
  • GNU spotlight with Karl Berry
  • Richard Stallman's speaking schedule and other free software events
  • Take action with the FSF!

5/9 -- FSF statement on jury's partial verdict in Oracle v Google

Were it grounded in reality, Oracle's claim that copyright law gives them proprietary control over any software that uses a particular functional API would be terrible for free software and programmers everywhere. It is an unethical and greedy interpretation created with the express purpose of subjugating as many computer users as possible, and is particularly bad in this context because it comes at a time when the sun has barely set on the free software community's celebration of Java as a language newly suitable for use in the free world.

Fortunately, the claim is not yet reality, and we hope Judge Alsup will keep it that way.

5/22 -- Diablo 3 DRM: "It's really an online game without a monthly fee"

Blizzard has released the long-awaited game Diablo 3 to much fanfare, and yet to many gamers, much disappointment and frustration because of the game's DRM system. It requires a permanent internet connection to play -- moving much of the in-game interaction and logic to the network. Blizzard is using Diablo 3 to operate an online auction house, using real-world currency or in-game gold, which in turn can be exchanged between players to purchase weapons, materials and upgrades for your in-game character.

Take action

5/21 -- Publishers and activists come together to say NO to DRM on ebooks

Friday, May 4th was the fourth International Day Against DRM, and wow -- what a day! We were supported by our friends at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Creative Commons, the Accessible Computing Foundation, Fight for the Future, APRIL, and our sister organizations, FSF France, FSF India and FSF Europe.

We had a solid base of activist events all over the world -- from Massachusetts to Spain, Florida, Japan, England, Portugal, and more. These local events are especially important as they spread the message by word of mouth -- DRM elimination crew members (that's you) telling people in their local communities about the specific ways defective technologies like DRM are disrupting their lives and taking away their freedom.

5/18 -- New items in the guide to DRM-free living

We've added some new items to the guide to DRM-free living, including music from They Might Be Giants and Radio Wonderland, and comedy from Louis CK, Aziz Ansari, Jim Gaffigan, Richard Herring, Stewart Lee and Simon Munnery, as well as ebooks from O'Reilly and Smashwords.

5/31 -- Nonfree DRM'd Games on GNU/Linux: Good or Bad?

A well known company, Valve, that distributes nonfree computer games with Digital Restrictions Management, recently announced it would distribute these games for GNU/Linux. What good and bad effects can this have?

How does this development affect users' freedom?

5/23 -- Call on the new French president to "Stop software patents"

The next Competitiveness Council will be held today, May 31st. François Hollande's government will be attending it for the first time. April, the French free software group, calls upon the President to take this opportunity to act against software patents and bring up the flaws of the current unitary patent project.

5/8 -- Richard Stallman: Photos from Madrid

We have some photographs of Richard's latest European trip, which included a stop in Madrid, at the IES Arquitecto Ventura Rodríguez, where four-hundred people came to hear him speak, on March 1st.

5/8 -- Richard Stallman: In Singapore

And at the National University of Singapore's School of Computing, on March 13th, where three-to-four hundred people came to hear him speak.

5/10 -- GNU Emacs Reference mugs -- all gone but back soon!

Thanks to a generous donation by one of our supporters, we were able to offer a limited set of GNU Emacs Reference mugs through the GNU Press. Unfortunately, due to the incredible popularity of the mugs, we have sold out our entire stock in less than 24 hours. We apologize for the inconvenience.

More mugs are on their way, and if you would like to be first in line to buy one, please join our GNU Press mailing list.

5/29 -- Conservancy projects launch coordinated compliance efforts

Software Freedom Conservancy, a non-profit that provides a home and a broad range of services to free software projects, has announced a unified effort among many of its member projects to ensure compliance with their licenses. The effort brings together copyright holders, developers, and users to ensure that the rights embodied in licenses are fully upheld for all developers, users, and the general public.

The effort brings the Samba and Busybox projects together with a new effort called the GPL Compliance Project for Linux Developers. This new project is comprised of copyright holders in the kernel Linux who have contributed to the project under its license, the GPLv2. These seven copyright holders have formally asked Conservancy to engage in compliance efforts for their copyrights in the kernel.

LibrePlanet featured resource: Gaming Collective

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 LibrePlanet Gaming Collective, a group of free software activists organized around their enthusiasm for video games. By gathering around free software video games, we are furthering the ideals of free software and related issues as necessary means for a free society.

If you're interested in playing free games, you should join the Collective.

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

GNU Spotlight with Karl Berry

New GNU releases as of May 31, 2012:

aris-1.7 autogen-5.16 coreutils-8.17 freefont-20120503 freeipmi-1.1.5 gcal-3.6.2 global-6.2.4 gmp-5.0.5 gnuhealth-1.6.1 gnutls-2.12.19 gsasl-1.8.0 guile-clutter-1.10.0 guile-gnome-platform-2.16.2 kawa-1.12 libgsasl-1.8.0 libidn-1.25 librejs-4.6 parallel-20120522 wdiff-1.1.2

To get announcements of most new GNU releases, subscribe to the info-gnu mailing list:

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.

This month we welcome Ian Dunn as the author and maintainer of the new package GNU Aris, and Nala Ginrut as the new maintainer of GNU SXML, now renamed and generalized to GNU XMLAT.

Several GNU packages 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 GNU, 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.

Richard Stallman's speaking schedule and other events

  • "Por una sociedad digital libre" -- June 2nd, Pirai do Sul, Brazil
  • "A Free Digital Society" -- June 4th, Porto Alegre, Brazil
  • "Logiciels libres et éducation" -- June 27th, Marly-le-Roi, France

In July 2012, Stallman will be Czech Republic, Germany and Venezuela. See http://www.fsf.org/events/rms-speeches.html for details of future speeches.

Another event we'd like to draw your attention to is the 13th Libre Software Meeting, in Geneva, Switzerland on July 7th. LSM is a non-commercial cycle of conferences, round tables and practical workshops based on Libre Software and its uses. Its aim is to provide a platform for Libre Software users, developers and stakeholders.

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.

#

The Free Software Supporter is edited by Matt Lee, Campaigns Manager

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.


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You can unsubscribe to this mailing-list by visiting the link http://crm.fsf.org/index.php?q=civicrm/mailing/unsubscribe&reset=1&jid=126243&qid=2264861&h=3eb00de64109e80c.

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Thursday, May 3, 2012

Coalition against Digital Restrictions Management ready to go for May 4th Day Against DRM

BOSTON, Massachusetts, USA — Thursday, May 3, 2012 — Defective by Design will hold its annual International Day Against DRM (http://dayagainstdrm.org) on Friday, May 4th, targeting the use of Digital Restrictions Management on ebooks. Several other organizations have joined to express their concern for the freedoms of authors and readers, including Creative Commons, O'Reilly Media, No Starch Press, the Accessible Computing Foundation, Libre Graphics Magazine, APRIL, the Free Software Foundation and its sister organizations, FSF France and FSF India.

Matt Lee, campaigns manager of Defective by Design, said, "DRM is a growing problem in the area of ebooks, where people have had their books restricted so they can't freely loan, re-sell or donate them, read them without being tracked, or move them to a new device without re-purchasing all of them. They've even had their ebooks deleted by companies without their permission."

As part of the day, people fed up with DRM are holding protest and awareness events in Cincinnati, Orlando, Amherst, San Francisco, Boston, Madrid, Rome, Manchester, Nagoya (Japan), and Aveiro (Portugal). More events are still being added at http://libreplanet.org/wiki/Group:DefectiveByDesign/Day_Against_DRM_2012.

Supporters are also taking action online, displaying the campaign's banner and using the opportunity to blog about their frustrations with DRM.

Notable science fiction author and editor of the influential BoingBoing.net blog, Cory Doctorow said, "As an author, I understand that DRM doesn't do squat to protect my interests. As a businessperson, I understand that DRM usurps my commercial relationships with my customers and hands them to DRM vendors."

Sanders Kleinfeld, author of HTML5 for publishers said in an interview with O'Reilly Media, "What's disappointing right now is that Amazon is very set on their Mobi format for their Kindle device, Apple has made strides away from EPUB 3 with their latest iBooks 2.0 and iBooks Author. I think vendors that make these devices are interested in maintaining that lock-in for customers."

Defective by Design has held previous international days against DRM in 2006, 2010 and 2011, focusing on use of DRM by Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and the RIAA. Defective by Design is a campaign of the Free Software Foundation.

Information on how to participate can be found at http://dayagainstdrm.org. Pictures, videos, and accounts will be posted afterward at http://defectivebydesign.org.

About the Free Software Foundation

The Free Software Foundation, founded in 1985, is dedicated to promoting computer users' right to use, study, copy, modify, and redistribute computer programs. The FSF promotes the development and use of free (as in freedom) software — particularly the GNU operating system and its GNU/Linux variants — and free documentation for free software. The FSF also helps to spread awareness of the ethical and political issues of freedom in the use of software, and its Web sites, located at fsf.org and gnu.org, are an important source of information about GNU/Linux. Donations to support the FSF's work can be made at http://donate.fsf.org. Its headquarters are in Boston, MA, USA.

Media Contacts

Matt Lee
Campaigns Manager
Free Software Foundation
+1-617-500-3284
campaigns@fsf.org

#


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Monday, April 30, 2012

Free Software Supporter -- Issue 49, April 2012

Welcome to the Free Software Supporter, the Free Software Foundation's monthly news digest and action update -- being read by you and 56,299 other activists. That's 1,192 more than last month!

Encourage your friends to subscribe and help us build an audience by adding our subscriber widget to your web site.

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

Multilingual? Send translations of the Supporter to campaigns@fsf.org.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

  • Day Against DRM -- May 4th 2012
  • FSF is hiring: Operations Assistant
  • Tor/Forge to drop DRM from ebooks, citing pressure from readers
  • "FRAND" is a FRAUD
  • Can you help Groklaw monitor the Google/Oracle trial?
  • French presidential elections 2012 and free software
  • Stop the Online Spying Bill
  • Spring cleaning at the GNU Press store
  • Network Services Aren't Free or Nonfree; They Raise Other Issues
  • Get involved: Brazilian patent office software patent consultation
  • Donate to support free software gaming: The Liberated Pixel Cup
  • "Technology should help us share, not constrain us"
  • GNU spotlight with Karl Berry
  • Richard Stallman's speaking schedule and other FSF events
  • Take action with the FSF!

Day Against DRM -- May 4th 2012

While DRM has largely been defeated in downloaded music, it is a growing problem in the area of ebooks, where people have had their books restricted so they can't freely loan, re-sell or donate them, read them without being tracked, or move them to a new device without re-purchasing all of them. They've even had their ebooks deleted by companies without their permission. It continues to be a major issue in the area of movies and video too.

People all over the world are going to be showing their opposition to DRM, and you can join them! Attend a local event and take part in the Day Against DRM on May 4th, 2012.

FSF is hiring: Operations Assistant

This Boston-based position works closely with the Executive Director and Business Operations Manager to ensure all administrative functions of the FSF run smoothly and efficiently, preserving our 4-star Charity Navigator rating and boosting all areas of our work.

Tor/Forge to drop DRM from ebooks, citingpressure from readers

The largest science fiction publisher in the world, Tom Doherty Associates (whose labels include Tor, Forge, Orb, and Starscape books) announced on Tuesday, April 24th, that "by early July 2012, their entire list of ebooks will be available DRM-free."

President and publisher Tom Doherty cites pressure from authors and readers.

"FRAND" is a FRAUD

The UK government is holding a consultation about what sort of patent licenses an "open" standard should require. Anyone that develops free software (free as in freedom, not a matter of price) and would like it to be used in the UK has reason to be concerned with this, along with anyone that uses or distributes free software in the UK.

Can you help Groklaw monitor the Google/Oracle trial?

The Groklaw website needs your help to update the community on the trial proceedings.

  • You will need to be physically present at the courtroom and take notes on who says what.

  • You don't have to be a legal expert. Just be the eyes and ears for the community.

The trial has begun and will run for 8-10 weeks in San Francisco.

If you're able to help, please email PJ at Groklaw -- pj2@groklaw.net. She will give you more information.

French presidential elections 2012 and free software

The French free software advocacy group April asked all of the candidates in the upcoming French presidential elections about their positions on free software, software patents, DRM and more.

At the moment, Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, le Front de Gauche for Jean-Luc Melenchon, Eva Joly and Francois Bayrou have answered (in French). Fleur Pellerin, in charge of Francois Hollande's digital economy program has sent in her answers. April is still waiting for answers from Nicolas Sarkozy and Jean-Marie le Pen, although they both answered in 2007.

Stop the Online Spying Bill

UPDATE: Passed the house, now onto the Senate. Keep the pressure on.

The federal government and big companies want limitless new powers to spy on you, and they plan to get them via legislation called the "Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act" (HR 3523).

CISPA would give the government new powers to read, watch and listen to everything we do on the Internet. The folks behind CISPA claim that national security interests make this surveillance necessary, but the bill's language is so vague and overreaching that it opens the door for rampant abuse of our online rights, including bypassing privacy protections to spy on your emails and text messages, block access to particular Web sites and permit companies to hand over social networking and cellphone contact lists.

Spring cleaning at the GNU Press store

Discounts are now available on certain older editions of GNU Press manuals.

With the recent release of the latest editions of our Emacs and GDB manuals, it is time for some Spring cleaning. Previous editions of both manuals are now available at a discounted rate through the GNU Press store. Debugging with GDB: The GNU Source-Level Debugger, V 5.1.1 has been discounted from $40 to $20, and GNU Emacs Manual, 16th Edition, v. 22 has been discounted from $45 to $30. While not the most up-to-date references, these manuals should be a useful addition to anyone's collection, particularly at those prices.

Network Services Aren't Free or Nonfree; They Raise Other Issues

Programs and services are different kinds of entities. A program is a work that you can execute; a service is an activity that you might interact with.

For programs, we make a distinction between free and nonfree (proprietary). More precisely, this distinction applies to a program that you have a copy of: either you have the four freedoms for your copy or you don't.

An activity (such as a service) doesn't exist in the form of copies, so it's not possible to have a copy or to make copies. As a result, the four freedoms that define free software don't make sense for services.

Get involved: Brazilian patent office software patent consultation

Brazil's patent office has launched a consultation about granting software patents.

Donate to support free software gaming: The Liberated Pixel Cup

Liberated Pixel Cup is a two-part competition: make a bunch of awesome free culture licensed artwork, and then make a bunch of free software games that use it.

Liberated Pixel Cup brings together some powerful allies: Creative Commons, OpenGameArt, the Free Software Foundation, and you.

Liberated Pixel Cup will be awesome, but it can't happen without the help of people like you.

LibrePlanet featured resource: Day Against DRM

May 4th is the International Day Against DRM. As well as the website for the event, http://dayagainstdrm.org, all the local events are up at: http://libreplanet.org/wiki/Group:DefectiveByDesign/Day_Against_DRM_2012

Even if you can't make it to a local event on the day itself, please share the website with people on your social networks: http://ur1.ca/95484

"Technology should help us share, not constrain us"

Companies like Amazon can control the way we use the ebooks we buy. Instead let's build a publishing model based on freedom.

GNU Spotlight with Karl Berry

New GNU releases as of April 30, 2012:

  • aspell6-hus-0.03-1
  • autoconf-2.69
  • autoconf-archive-2012.04.07
  • automake-1.12
  • c-graph-2.0
  • dfarc-3.10
  • freedink-1.08.20120427
  • freeipmi-1.1.4
  • gawk-4.0.1
  • gdb-7.4.1
  • gnuhealth-1.4.5
  • gnujump-1.0.7
  • gnutls-3.0.19
  • gnutrition-0.31.1
  • grep-2.12
  • hello-2.8
  • help2man-1.40.9
  • librejs-4.5
  • parallel-20120422
  • psychosynth-0.3.0
  • sipwitch-1.2.4
  • ucommon-5.2.2
  • xboard-4.6.2
  • xnee-3.13
  • xorriso-1.2.2

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.

This month we welcome Loic Duros as the new maintainer of GNU IceCat and of the new GNU package librejs. And I'd like to specially mention the new major releases of GNU Autoconf and GNU Automake, and the first release of GNU C-Graph, a package demonstrating the theory of convolution underlying engineering systems and signal analysis.

Several GNU packages 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 GNU, 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.

Richard Stallman's speaking schedule and other FSF events

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.


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Friday, April 27, 2012

UPDATE: Take action by June 4th: "FRAND" is a FRAUD

UPDATE: Submission deadline is now June 4th

The UK government is holding a consultation about what sort of patent licenses an "open" standard should require. Anyone that develops free software (free as in freedom, not a matter of price) and would like it to be used in the UK has reason to be concerned with this, along with anyone that uses or distributes free software in the UK.

One option under consideration is to demand the patent holder give everyone a royalty-free patent license for implementing the standard. That at least permits free software to support the standard.

The other option is a criterion called "FRAND", which claims to mean "Fair, Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory". What it really means is that the patent holder must publish terms and allow anyone to buy a license on those terms. The terms are often such as to exclude free software entirely from implementing the standard.

For instance, these terms can (and in many cases do) require anyone distributing the software to pay a license fee per copy of the program distributed. If you receive a program with a requirement to pay someone if you redistribute it, you do not have freedom #2, so the program is not free software. In effect, these terms discriminate against free software, which is neither fair nor reasonable.

The term "FRAND" is a FRAUD.

The existence of a software patent on a certain idea is not an automatic sentence of exclusion for free software. A few patent holders have granted liberal patent licenses for all use of a certain program, sometimes even covering all free programs distributed under the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL). Rather more have given royalty-free licenses to implement specific standards, because that was part of the requirement for approval of the standard. But these are a rare exception, and the difference between them and typical "FRAND" licenses demonstrates how far the latter are from allowing free software.

Please answer the consultation to support the requirement for royalty-free licenses for "open standards". The closing date is June 4.

For information on the consultation, see:

Additionally, Free Software Foundation Europe has prepared recommended answers to some of the questions in the consultation.


Postscripts:

This need for this consultation arises from a harmful policy decision: allowing patents to restrict the development, distribution and use of software. A correct decision on the question at hand will partly reduce the damage that software patents do, but they will still do damage. Software patents put software developers, distributors and sometimes even users in danger. The UK ought to reconsider allowing them at all.

The reason that the deceptive idea of "FRAND" is considered as an option is that the question is formulated in terms of "open" standards, rather than "free" or "libre" standards. If the UK government posed the question in terms of standards that respect freedom, the answer would be obvious: everyone must be free to implement the standard.


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Monday, April 23, 2012

Stop the Online Spying Bill

The federal government and big companies want limitless new powers to spy on you, and they plan to get them via legislation called CISPA — the "Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act" (HR 3523).

The "Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act" (HR 3523) would give the government new powers to read, watch and listen to everything we do on the Internet. The folks behind CISPA claim that national security interests make this surveillance necessary, but the bill's language is so vague and overreaching that it opens the door for rampant abuse of our online rights, including bypassing privacy protections to spy on your emails and text messages, block access to particular Web sites and permit companies to hand over social networking and cellphone contact lists.

CISPA also contains sweeping language that could be used as a blunt weapon to silence whistleblower Web sites like WikiLeaks and the news organizations that publish their revelations.

Furthermore, it would create an environment in which we refrain from speaking freely online for fear that the National Security Agency — the same agency that has conducted "warrantless wiretapping" online for years — could come knocking.

As a nonprofit advocacy organization, the FSF objects to any such censorship, regardless of whether we agree with the messages being censored. We also worry specifically about the ways these measures might be used against free software developers, especially those working in the area of privacy and encryption software.

Tell your member of Congress to vote NO on CISPA and stop this bill in its tracks.

Our friends at the EFF have more information on CISPA.

Based on text from SaveTheInternet.com.


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