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[LUG] Fwd: [FSF] Free Software Supporter -- Issue 34, January 2011

 

Might be of interest to some ....


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: John Sullivan <info@xxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, Jan 31, 2011 at 11:13 PM
Subject: [FSF] Free Software Supporter -- Issue 34, January 2011
To: info-fsf@xxxxxxx


# Free Software Supporter
Issue 34, January 2011

Welcome to the Free Software Supporter, the Free Software Foundation's
monthly news digest and action update -- being read by you and 37,446
other activists. That's 1,054 more than last month!

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

 * Subscribe: <http://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter>
 * Widget: <http://www.fsf.org/associate/widget>

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@xxxxxxx>.

## TABLE OF CONTENTS

* Technological power should be held by all users of a technology
* OSI and FSF Send Joint Position to Department of Justice
* No double standards: supporting Google's push for WebM
* New High Priority Project: PowerVR drivers
* Call for IceCat developers
* The advantages of free software
* The Free Software Compliance Lab needs your help
* GNU spotlight with Karl Berry
* Featured GNU Status Report: GNU FreeFont
* Richard Stallman's speaking schedule and other FSF events
* Take action with the FSF!

### Technological power should be held by all users of a technology

FSF board member Benjamin Mako Hill urges people who understand the
important of software freedom to join the FSF as associate members.

As our lives become increasingly mediated by technology, the question
of who controls technology becomes another way of asking "Who controls
us?"

* <http://www.fsf.org/appeal/2010/mako/>

### OSI and FSF Send Joint Position to Department of Justice

The Open Source Initiative (OSI) and Free Software Foundation (FSF)
have sent a joint position statement to the United States Department
of Justice (DOJ), urging it to scrutinize Novell's proposal to sell
patents to the newly-formed CPTN Holdings. Both organizations believe
that CPTN Holdings may use these patents to attack free, libre, and
open source (FLOSS) software.

* <http://www.fsf.org/news/osi-fsf-joint-position-cptn>

### No double standards: supporting Google's push for WebM

We've signed up as a supporter of the WebM Project, and we encourage
other foundations and organizations to join us -- write to
<webmaster@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> to learn how. Today, we're also urging Web
site operators to distribute videos in the WebM format, and abandon
H.264

* <http://www.fsf.org/news/supporting-webm>

### New High Priority Project: PowerVR drivers

We've added a new project to our High Priority Projects list: Writing
free software drivers capable of 3D acceleration for the PowerVR
engine.

This is a critical project, because PowerVR is being used in many new
and popular platforms, such as Android/Linux tablets and phones, and
netbooks. Currently it requires proprietary drivers in order to access
many video features.

* <http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/new-high-priority-project-powervr-drivers>

### Call for IceCat developers

The GNU IceCat project is a web browser built to deal with the influx
of threats to freedom and privacy on the web from traps such as
nonfree plugins and nonfree JavaScript.

* <http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/icecat-devs>

### The advantages of free software

People outside the free software movement frequently ask about the
practical advantages of free software. It is a curious question.
Richard Stallman gives an insightful -- and entertaining -- answer.

* <http://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/the-advantages-of-free-software>

### The Free Software Compliance Lab needs your help

Brett Smith is the lead compliance engineer in the Free Software
Foundation's GPL compliance lab. He helped coordinated the GPLv3
drafting process and has handled enforcement cases against Apple's App
Store. He talks about his work at the Foundation and the important
connection to support from FSF members.

New associate members who support the Compliance Lab through this
appeal and join online will receive a set of GPLv3 stickers. They're
great ways to start a conversation about free software, and your
support for the FSF.

* <http://www.fsf.org/appeal/2010/licensing/>

### LibrePlanet featured resource: LibrePlanet 2011 conference

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 2011 conference
page. The conference date and location have just been set -- March 19,
2011 at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston, MA, USA. Stay tuned
to the wiki page for information about speakers, schedules, and event
surrounding the official conference. We hope to see all of you there!

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

* <http://libreplanet.org/wiki/LibrePlanet2011>

### GNU Spotlight with Karl Berry

autoconf-archive-2011.01.02     libosip2-3.5.0
ccaudio2-2.0.0                  libzrtpcpp-1.6.0
ccrtp-1.8.0                     mcsim-5.4.0
coreutils-8.9                   moe-1.4
ddrescue-1.14                   ocrad-0.21
freeipmi-1.0.1                  parallel-20110125
gnuchess-5.08                   swbis-1.9
gnupg-2.0.17                    ucommon-4.1.0
gnuprolog-java_0.2.6            xnee-3.08
guile-ncurses-1.2               xorriso-1.0.0
libmicrohttpd-0.9.6

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 Adam Dutko as a new co-maintainer of GNU Fontutils
(with me, so personal thanks to Adam), and Antonio Ceballos as the new
maintainer of GNU Chess -- check out the new GNU Chess 6 pretest at
<http://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/chess/>.

A revived GNU Status Report bulletin was published a few days ago,
<http://www.gnu.org/bulletins/>.  It has news and information on a few
GNU packages: GCC, Hurd, Coreutils, etc.  (We hope the next installment
will include reports from many more packages.)

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@xxxxxxx>, with any
GNUish questions or suggestions for future installments.

### Featured GNU Status Report: GNU FreeFont

Starting this month, to give insight into the full breadth and depth
of the GNU Project, we will be periodically choosing a GNU program to
feature with some extra info.

This month, we highlight GNU FreeFont. GNU FreeFont is a free family
of scalable outline fonts, suitable for general use on computers and
for desktop publishing. It is Unicode-encoded for compatibility with
all modern operating systems.

The fonts are ready to use, downloadable in TrueType and OpenType
formats.

In GNU FreeFont release 20100919, several language scripts were added:

 * Cherokee, Osmanya, Unified Canadian Aboriginal Syllabics,
   Tifinagh, Armenian (serif), Vai, Kayah Li. Coptic, Glagolitic.
 * Buginese and Persian were patched.
 * Many characters were added to old Cyrillic ranges.
 * In addition, Sinhala was replaced by a version taken from the TeX
   font sinh by Yannis Haralambous.

Several of the symbol ranges were expanded, and a few glyphs were
corrected.

Several technical improvements were made to font tables, some of which
should improve display.

For more information, see
https://savannah.gnu.org/forum/forum.php?forum_id=6518.

Thanks to Steve White for the info!

* <http://www.gnu.org/software/freefont/>

### Richard Stallman's speaking schedule

2011-02-06 Copyright vs. Community
          Chennai, India

* <http://www.fsf.org/events/20110206-cvc-chennai>

2011-02-18 Copyright vs. Community
          Lecce, Italy

* <http://www.fsf.org/events/20110218-cvc-lecce>

2011-02-23 Qu'est-ce que le logiciel libre?
          Lille, France

* <http://www.fsf.org/events/20110223-fs-lille>

2011-02-26 The Danger of Software Patents
          Istanbul, Turkey

* <http://www.fsf.org/events/20110226-dsp-istanbul>

2011-02-27 Free Software and Your Freedom
          Ankara, Turkey

* <http://www.fsf.org/events/20110227-fs-ankara>

2011-03-01 Free Software and Your Freedom
          Cambridge, England

* <http://www.fsf.org/events/20110301-fs-cambridge>

2011-03-02 A Free Digital Society
          Preston, United Kingdom

* <http://www.fsf.org/events/20110302-fs-preston>

### Other FSF and free software events

2011-02-16 Churchill Club Panel Discussion on Software Patents
          Mountain View, CA, USA

* <http://www.fsf.org/events/churchill-club-patent-panel>

2011-03-19 LibrePlanet 2011
          Boston, MA, USA

* <http://libreplanet.org/wiki/LibrePlanet2011>

### 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 FSF volunteer Osama Khalid.

Copyright © 2011 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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