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Federal employees: support the FSF through the Combined Federal Campaign, deadline January 12, 2018

If you are a federal civilian, postal, or military employee, you may want to submit your contribution to the FSF via the 2017 Combined Federal Campaign (CFC), the workplace giving campaign for United States federal government employees -- the deadline for submissions is January 12, 2018. The CFC is the world's largest annual workplace giving campaign, allowing US federal civilian, postal, and military employees to pledge donations to nonprofit charities, and last year, federal employees voluntarily participating in the CFC contributed more than $167 million to charitable causes.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Winter fundraiser: thank you for powering up the free software movement!

Richard Stallman on why you should join the FSF

FSF adds PureOS to list of endorsed GNU/Linux distributions

Team Internet is far from done: what's next for net neutrality and how you can help

FSF signs onto Public Knowledge letter on behalf of New York City requesting Federal Communications Commission (FCC) delay net neutrality vote



Comments submitted in the fight against DMCA anti-circumvention rules

The latest abuse by Apple: Deliberately slowing iPhone performance

The FSF tech team needs Spring 2018 interns! Apply by January 19, 2018

RMS article -- For clarity's sake, please don't say "licensed under GNU GPL 2"!

RMS, November 2017: Photos from Sacramento, Innsbruck

Why free software is important in the modern tech era

Widening the availability of health care with free software

"Wreaking Havoc" -- Hewlett-Packard installs system-slowing spyware on its PCs without consent

Artifex and Hancom reach settlement over Ghostscript dispute

GNU Guix and GuixSD 0.14.0 released

Don’t feed them after midnight: Reverse-engineering the Furby Connect

December Free Software Directory meeting recap

Join the FSF and friends in updating the Free Software Directory

LibrePlanet featured resource: Code of Conduct

GNU Spotlight with Brandon Invergo: 19 new GNU releases!

Richard Stallman's speaking schedule and other FSF events

Thank GNUs!

GNU copyright contributions

Take action with the FSF!

View this issue online here: https://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter/2018/january

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El Free Software Supporter está disponible en español. Para ver la versión en español haz click aqui: https://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter/2018/enero

Para cambiar las preferencias de usuario y recibir los próximos números del Supporter en español, haz click aquí: https://my.fsf.org/civicrm/profile/edit?reset=1&gid=34&id={contact.contact_id}&{contact.checksum}

Le Free Software Supporter est disponible en français. Pour voir la version française cliquez ici: https://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter/2018/janvier

Pour modifier vos préférences et recevoir les prochaines publications du Supporter en français, cliquez ici: https://my.fsf.org/civicrm/profile/edit?reset=1&gid=34&id={contact.contact_id}&{contact.checksum}

Winter fundraiser: thank you for powering up the free software movement!

We're touched and grateful that our supporters blasted through our fundraising goal of $450,000 by December 31. Every dollar counts to ensure that the FSF can protect your rights in the year ahead, and we're starting 2018 in excellent shape.

Richard Stallman on why you should join the FSF

From December 29

There are many organizations that usefully promote free software, but no other organization we know of stands for software freedom as firmly as the Free Software Foundation. If freedom in your computing is important to you, please join the Free Software Foundation.

FSF adds PureOS to list of endorsed GNU/Linux distributions

From December 21

The FSF's list showcases GNU/Linux operating system distributions whose developers have made a commitment to follow its Guidelines for Free System Distributions. Each one includes and endorses exclusively free "as in freedom" software. After extensive evaluation and many iterations, the FSF concluded that PureOS, a modern and user-friendly Debian-derived distribution, meets these criteria.

Team Internet is far from done: what's next for net neutrality and how you can help

From December 15 by Elliott Harmon and Corynne McSherry

Defying the facts, the law, and the will of millions of Americans, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has voted to repeal net neutrality protections. It’s difficult to understate how radical the FCC’s decision was. The Internet has operated under formal and informal net neutrality principles for years. For the first time, the FCC has not only abdicated its role in enforcing those principles, it has rejected them altogether. Here’s the good news: the fight is far from over, and Team Internet has plenty of paths forward.

FSF signs onto Public Knowledge letter on behalf of New York City requesting Federal Communications Commission (FCC) delay net neutrality vote

From December 4 by Public Knowledge

Just prior to the FCC vote on net neutraility, the FSF signed onto a letter on behalf of the City of New York, in which Public Knowledge, consumer advocacy organizations, digital divide advocacy organizations, rural advocacy organizations, and local governments strongly urged that they delay a vote on the draft “Restoring Internet Freedom” Order until resolution of the pending en banc review in FTC v. AT&T Mobility.

Comments submitted in the fight against DMCA anti-circumvention rules

From December 8

In the fight against Digital Restrictions Management (DRM), the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is public enemy number one, due to its anti-circumvention provisions. These provisions create legal penalties for trying to take back control from the DRM on your own software, music, movies, and devices. We submitted comments in support of every new proposed exemption to the DMCA anti-circumvention provisions, and urged supporters to lend their voices to the chorus.

The latest abuse by Apple: Deliberately slowing iPhone performance

From December 22

Surprise, surprise, Apple has done it again: controlling iPhones, fundamentally changing the way they work, and further eroding user control. In December, Primate Lab's founder, John Poole, reported an unprecedented degradation in older iPhones' performance. Originally attributed to the age of these phones' batteries, it is now clear that Apple intentionally added an anti-feature in its newest update: iOS now throttles phones when there is exceptional performance demand.

The FSF tech team needs Spring 2018 interns! Apply by January 19, 2018

From December 27

We're looking for interns to work with our tech team, who are interested in advancing their skill in system administration, programming, security auditing, software stack research, and other technical domains this spring. To apply, send a letter of interest and resume with two references by email to hiring@fsf.org.

RMS article -- For clarity's sake, please don't say "licensed under GNU GPL 2"!

From December 21

In this article, Free Software Foundation president Richard Stallman (RMS) explains how to properly identify what GNU license your work is under. It is vitally important that developers indicate in their license notices whether they are licensing their work under that version "only" or under "any later version."

RMS, November 2017: Photos from Sacramento, Innsbruck

From December 26

RMS was in Sacramento, California, on November 15th, as a guest of the Child Welfare Digital Services, which is a California-government project whose mission is to “fundamentally change the way state government develops software by leveraging free (libre) software, agile methodologies, and user-centered design." Later in the month, he was in Innsbruck, Austria, for a lecture series on “Challenges to learning and education in the media age” (“Herausforderungen für Lernen und Bildung im Medienzeitalter,”) at the University of Innsbruck.

Why free software is important in the modern tech era

From December 1 by Carlos Rodriguez

When one hears the term free software it is common to think that it refers to price. However, it is used to refer to software that is free, as in freedom, and sometimes free of cost as well.

Widening the availability of health care with free software

From December 22 by T. Nandakumar

Experts participating in Swatantra 2017, a two-day international conference on free software, highlighted the increasing use of free software in integrative and precision medicine and in the development of medical devices for a variety of applications.

"Wreaking Havoc" -- HP Inc. installs system-slowing spyware on its PCs without consent

From December 4 by Mac Slavo

On the heels of Lenovo’s massive $3.5 million fine for preinstalling adware on laptops without users‘ consent, HP Inc. (formerly Hewlett-Packard) is jumping in with both feet when it comes to installing spyware on its PCs without the consumer’s permission. According to numerous reports gathered by Computer World, the company is deploying a telemetry client (a system data that is uploaded by the Connected User Experience and Telemetry component), on customer computers without asking permission.

Artifex and Hancom reach settlement over Ghostscript dispute

From December 7 by Maria Burns

Artifex Software, Inc. and Hancom, Inc. announced a confidential agreement to settle their legal dispute, concerning the use of Artifex’s software Ghostscript under the GNU General Public License. While the parties had their differences in the interpretation of the license, the companies were able to reach an amicable resolution.

GNU Guix and GuixSD 0.14.0 released

From December 7 by Ludovic Courtès

GNU Guix is a transactional package manager for the GNU system. The Guix System Distribution, or GuixSD, is an advanced distribution of the GNU system that relies on GNU Guix and respects the user's freedom. This release comes with GuixSD ISO-9660 installation images, a virtual machine image of GuixSD, and with tarballs to install the package manager on top of your GNU/Linux distro, either from source or from binaries.

Donate to support GNU Guix at the link below!

Don’t feed them after midnight: Reverse-engineering the Furby Connect

From November 24 by Context Research

With Christmas approaching at the time of publication, the writers at Context Research thought it high time to have a prod at some connected toys. They reviewed the Furby Connect from Hasbro, which comes with a smartphone app that offers to "connect you to a world of surprises"... some more pleasant than others.

December Free Software Directory meeting recap

Check out the great work our volunteers accomplished at the December Free Software Directory meetings. Every week, free software activists from around the world come together in #fsf on irc.freenode.org to help improve the Free Software Directory.

Join the FSF and friends in updating the Free Software Directory

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.freenode.org, and usually include a handful of regulars as well as newcomers. Freenode is accessible from any IRC client -- Everyone's welcome!

The next meeting is Friday, January 5, from 12pm to 3pm EST (16:00 to 19:00 UTC). Details here:

LibrePlanet featured resource: Code of Conduct

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 Code of Conduct, which applies to us as participants in any campaigns, projects, and communities under the LibrePlanet name, and covers our behavior in any related forum, mailing list, IRC channel, wiki, Web site, public meeting, or private correspondence.

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

GNU Spotlight with Brandon Invergo: 19 new GNU releases!

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.

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 at maintainers@gnu.org with any GNUish questions or suggestions for future installments.

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 no events scheduled this month.

Other FSF and free software events

Thank GNUs!

We appreciate everyone who donates to the Free Software Foundation, and 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:

Aaron Conole

Aaron Grothe

Alain Brenzikofer

Alison Chaiken

Andrew Fox

Antonio Carzaniga

Beat Straehl

Ben Pfaff

Ben Sturmfels

Bernard Deffarges

Bret Fisher

Brewster Kahle

C&CZ IT Department, Faculty of Science, Radboud University

Christopher Marusich

Clifford Ireland

Conan Chiles

Donald Craig

Douglas Hauge

Electric Embers Cooperative

Faran Jessani

Guus Sliepen

Hiroo Yamagata

iFixit

Inouye Satoru

James Fitzgerald

Jean-Francois Blavier

Jeffrey O'Connell

Jelte van der Hoek

Jonathan Howell

Julian Doucette

Kevin Morenski

Laurent Ostiz

Lincoln Clarete

Marcus Pemer

Mark Boenke

Markus Fischer

Morten Lind

Neal Pawar

Nikolay Ksenev

Peter Kunze

Raphael Tremeaud

René Genz

Robert Dionne

Russell McManus

Russell Rezaian

Shyama Mandal

Simon Josefsson

Spencer Visick

Stephen Day

Stephen Ippolito

Steve Wickert

Warren Knight

Wenqing Yan

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:

Aaron Jensen (Emacs)

Adam Robert Halski (Emacs)

Kévin Le Gouguec (Emacs)

Kilian Verhetsel (GCC)

Peter Pisar (Emacs)

Torsten Müller (GNU Hyperbole)

Want to see your name on this list? Contribute to GNU and assign your copyright to the FSF.

Take action with the FSF!

Contributions from thousands of individual members enable the FSF's work. You can contribute by joining at https://my.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://my.fsf.org/join

The FSF is 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 campaigns section (https://www.fsf.org/campaigns) and take action on software patents, Digital Restrictions Management (DRM), free software adoption, OpenDocument, Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), and more.

Copyright © 2018 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/.