[FSF] Free Software Supporter - Issue 3, May 2008

[Joshua Gay]

# Free Software Supporter 
Issue 3, May 2008

Welcome to the Free Software Supporter, the Free Software Foundation's
monthly news digest and action update.

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>
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Miss an issue? You can catch up on back issues, here:
  * <http://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter>


## In this issue
* Free Software Supporter exclusive: WBUR is streaming Ogg Vorbis!
* DBD Action Alert - Libraries: Eliminate DRM!
* Get DeltaH, gNewSense 2.0
* Get your next machine with gNewSense
* Silicon Mechanics to ship servers with free BIOS preinstalled
* Can we rescue OLPC from Windows? by Richard M. Stallman
* End Software Patents: the Bilski hearing, heard.
* O Canada -- action alert!
* Libraries: Eliminate DRM!
* GNU Spotlight with Karl Berry
* Richard Stallman's speaking schedule and other FSF speeches
* Take Action with the FSF 


## Free Software Supporter exclusive: WBUR is streaming Ogg Vorbis!

We haven't blogged about it yet but we wanted to let our Free
Software Supporter subscribers know that one of the nation's largest
NPR stations, WBUR.org, is now streaming in Ogg Vorbis:

  * Listen now: <http://www.wbur.org/listen/>

This follows our action and meeting with WBUR from last month:
<http://www.fsf.org/blogs/wbur-playogg-update>.

Robin Lubbock, WBUR's Director of New Media said, "WBUR has a great
schedule of news and information programming 24 hours a day, which we
are very happy to make available to Ogg Vorbis listeners. It's
exciting to work with the Free Software Foundation to give a new
audience the chance to listen to WBUR's award winning programing as
well as the wonderful programs from NPR and the BBC Worldservice that
you can find daily on WBUR."


## DBD Action Alert - Libraries: Eliminate DRM!

  * Sign the open-letter 
  <http://www.defectivebydesign.org/LetterToLibraries>

  * Customize your own letter from our template. 
  <http://www.defectivebydesign.org/Library-Letter-Template>

Recently, we took action against the Boston Public Library (BPL)
demanding that they embargo the use of DRM technology on their
collection and create a policy that respects the motto that hangs
above their door: "free-to-all." To send a message to all libraries
that they too should respect their patrons' freedom, we urge you to
sign our open letter. To take action against your local library, we
urge you to customize a letter from our template.

Please, let us know (<mailto:address@hidden>) if you have
contacted or written your local library, and please let your friends
and fellow patrons know about the open letter.

Read the blog post about our previous action at the BPL: 
  * <http://defectivebydesign.org/blog/1120>


## Get DeltaH, gNewSense 2.0 

The all-free GNU/Linux distribution gNewSense has shipped its second
major release, named DeltaH. The gNewSense project dubs itself as "A
free as in freedom GNU/Linux distribution, that takes all the non-free
blobs out of a rather popular distribution." Read our press release:

  * <http://www.fsf.org/news/gnewsense-deltah>

Or get a copy of the new distribution: 

  * <http://www.gnewsense.org/Main/Deltah> 


## Get your next machine with gNewSense

Los Alamos Computers is selling laptops, desktops and servers
preinstalled with gNewSense. They are interested in selling free BIOS
machines as well, and they are donating a portion of their sales from
each free GNU/Linux system to the FSF -- find out more on our blog:

  * <http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/gnewsense-gnu-linux-preinstalled>

Or visit the GNU/Linux Computers page at:

  * <http://laclinux.com/gnu/GNU_Linux_Computers>


## Silicon Mechanics to ship servers with free BIOS preinstalled 

Silicon Mechanics, a manufacturer of server hardware, has committed to
shipping servers with coreboot, a free BIOS, preinstalled. Find out
more at:

  * <http://www.fsf.org/blogs/sysadmin/corebootserver>


## Can we rescue OLPC from Windows? by Richard M. Stallman

RMS posted an appeal to One Laptop per Child asking that they continue
making a strong commitment to freedom and to not ship the XO laptop
with Windows XP, as many are speculating is going to be the case. He
has urged the community to step up its efforts in helping OLPC and
asked OLPC to make it easier for the community do so. Read more:

  * <http://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/can-we-rescue-olpc-from-windows>


## End Software Patents: the Bilski hearing, heard.

The en banc hearing for the Bilski case occurred on Thursday, May 8th.
We hope that over the coming months the amicus brief filed by the End
Software Patents campaign will help lead to the elimination of
software patents. We will likely not hear back from the courts until
the second half of this year. You can find out more about the case and
the brief we filed in our blog post:

  * <http://www.fsf.org/news/amicus-bilski>

Or, check-out Groklaw's summary of the hearing:

  * <http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080508231813484>


## O Canada -- action alert! 

We made a call to action urging Canadian citizens in Ottawa to attend
the Public Policy Forum symposium, on April 28. This call came as a
result of finding from Cory Doctorow that, "The lobby for US-style
copyrights in Canada has gone into overdrive, recruiting a powerful
Member of Parliament and turning public forums on copyright into
one-sided love-fests for restrictive copyright regimes that
criminalize everyday Canadians." Find out more at:

  * <http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/CanadaCopyright>


## GNU Spotlight with Karl Berry

As mentioned last time, GNU is participating in Google's Summer of
Code program.  We were very appreciative of both the quality and
quantity of student applications.  We had to select just 10 out of the
submissions, which was difficult as always, but the result covers a
wide array of GNU packages.  The list of accepted proposals is at
<http://code.google.com/soc/2008/gnu/about.html>.

In addition, quite a few GNU packages participated in the GSoC as
separate organizations, rather than under the generic GNU umbrella
above: GCC, GIMP, GNOME, gnucap, Hurd, Gnumeric, and GNUstep.  Links
for those packages' GSoC pages are at the very end of
<http://www.gnu.org/software/soc-projects/ideas.html>.

Notable GNU releases for April 2008 include tar (now with lzma
support), coreutils, and the first release of GNU's C reference
manual.  Here's the complete list:

aspell-0.60.6     autoconf-2.62        commoncpp2-1.6.2    
coreutils-6.11    gama-1.9.05          gengetopt-2.22.1 
gjdoc-0.7.9       global-5.7.1         guile-gnome-platform-2.15.98
gnu-c-manual-0.1  gnuit-4.9.3          libextractor-0.5.20a 
libidn-1.8        libmicrohttpd-0.3.0  libtool-2.2.2        
libzrtpcpp-1.1.0  m4-1.4.11            octave-3.0.1         
sipwitch-0.1.1    swbis-0.951          tar-1.20             
texinfo-4.12      ucommon-1.9.1

See the packages' announcements, web pages
(http://www.gnu.org/software/PKGNAME) or the distributions themselves
for details.  Nearly all are available from <http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu>, or
preferably one of the mirrors: <http://www.gnu.org/prep/ftp.html>.

To get announcements of most new GNU packages, subscribe to the
info-gnu mailing list, <http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/info-gnu>,
which is publicly archived at <http://lists.gnu.org/pipermail/info-gnu>.

Finally, I'd like to specially welcome two new packages to GNU: zile
(<http://www.gnu.org/software/zile>) and libmicrohttpd
(<http://www.gnu.org/software/libmicrohttpd>), and their maintainers,
Reuben Thomas and Christian Grothoff, respectively.  Welcome and
thanks also to other newly-appointed maintainers: Debarshi Ray
(inetutils), Daniel Baumann (spell), Joel Granados (parted), Jim
Meyering (idutils), and Jose Maria Gomez Vergara (ddd).

A number of GNU packages are still looking for maintainers.  Since
this note is already longer than usual, let me just point interested
readers to <http://www.gnu.org/server/takeaction.html#unmaint>.

Please feel free to write to me, <address@hidden>, with any GNUish
questions or suggestions for future installments.


## Richard Stallman's speaking schedule and other FSF speeches

05/14 Hsinchu, Taiwan -- "The Danger of Software Patents."
  Info: http://www.fsf.org/events/20080514hsinchu

05/15 Hsinchu, Taiwan -- "The Free Software Movement."
  Info: http://www.fsf.org/events/20080515hsinchu

05/24 Shanghai, China -- "Free Software in Ethics and in Practice"
  Info: http://www.fsf.org/events/20080523Shanghai

05/28 Xi'an, China -- "The Free Software Movement"
  Info: http://www.fsf.org/events/20080528xian


05/30 Beijing, China -- TBA
  Info: http://www.fsf.org/events/20080530Beijing


## 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, Vista, OpenDocument, RIAA and more.


----------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright (c) 2008 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

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