[FSF] Free Software Supporter

[John Sullivan]

# Free Software Supporter 
Issue 15, June 2009

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 * FSF welcomes AdBard network for free software advertising
 * FSF Settles Suit Against Cisco
 * War on Sharing: RIAA moves to block new FSF court brief
 * Introducing RDF for GNU Licenses
 * No, Amazon did not release all of the Swindle's source code
 * Microsoft Office tries to break ODF
 * FSF at the Connecticut Film Festival
 * Help rewrite Canada's copyright law
 * New Zealand in urgent danger of software patents
 * Introduction to the Command Line
 * GNU spotlight with Karl Berry
 * Richard Stallman's speaking schedule and other FSF events
 * Take action with the FSF!

## FSF welcomes AdBard network for free software advertising

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) today welcomed the launch of
AdBard a new advertising network for technology based websites based
upon the promotion of free, libre and open source software (FLOSS)
friendly products and services.

The AdBard Network has been created by Tag1 Consulting to serve
websites dedicated to free software ideals, helping them connect
with companies selling products and services targeting a FLOSS
audience. AdBard solves the problem that more generic advertising
has led to the display of proprietary software products on sites
that otherwise promote computer user freedom.

  * <http://www.fsf.org/news/ad-bard>

## FSF Settles Suit Against Cisco

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) and Cisco Systems, Inc. are
pleased to announce that they have reached a joint agreement.

Cisco has agreed to appoint a Free Software Director for Linksys, a
subsidiary of Cisco, to supervise Linksys' compliance with the
requirements of free software licenses such as the GPL (the GNU
General Public License). The Free Software Director will report
periodically to the FSF regarding Linksys' compliance efforts. Cisco
has further agreed to take certain steps to notify previous
recipients of Linksys products containing FSF programs of their
rights under the GPL and other applicable licenses, to publish a
licensing notice on the Linksys website, and to provide additional
notices in a separate publication. In addition, Cisco will continue
to make the complete and corresponding source code for versions of
FSF programs used with current Linksys products freely available on
its website. Cisco will also make a monetary contribution to the
FSF.

  * <http://www.fsf.org/news/2009-05-cisco-settlement.html>

## War on Sharing: RIAA moves to block new FSF court brief

While we were publishing our response to the RIAA's recent attack on
the merit of organizations who represent the public's interest
filing informative briefs in cases that threaten to negatively
affect the public's interest, the RIAA was attacking us again.

  * <http://www.fsf.org/news/riaa-tenenbaum-amicus-revision>

## Introducing RDF for GNU Licenses 

For the past few months, the Compliance Lab has been working with
Creative Commons on a new project, and it's just been released. I'm
happy to announce that Resource Description Framework (RDF) metadata
now accompanies all of the GNU licenses.

  * <http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/2009-06-rdf>

## No, Amazon did not release all of the Swindle's source code

It was unfortunately reported yesterday by a number of sources
(including one pointed to by the *New York Times*) that Amazon had
released the source code for the software running on the Kindle DX.
Not all of the Kindle source code was released. It’s a selection
released in order to comply with the license requirements of the
code originally written by other people (like the GNU Project) which
Amazon modified for its own purposes. The Kindle is afflicted with
Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) and is tivoized, blocking your
ability to put modified code back on your own device.
 
  * <http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/kindle-swindle-source-code>

## Microsoft Office tries to break ODF

Just a quick update to our OpenDocument campaign, with news that
Microsoft Office has added support for ODF, but in a state that
leaves it incompatible with every other ODF capable application out
there, including OpenOffice.org and KOffice.

  * <http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/odf-office>

## FSF at the Connecticut Film Festival

On June 6th, FSF's John Sullivan gave a workshop titled "Copyleft
and the War on Sharing" at the Connecticut Film Festival in Danbury,
CT. There was a discussion about the history and experience of GNU,
the FSF, and the free software movement; and about some of the
different fronts in the War on Sharing that is being waged against
the public by groups like the RIAA, MPAA, BSA, Microsoft, and Apple.

  * <http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/fsf-at-ct-film-festival>

## Help rewrite Canada's copyright law

The Globe and Mail has put C-61, a bill to reform Canadian copyright
law, on a wiki for editing. This is a great opportunity to remove
the bad parts of the bill, and to guide the reform efforts toward
something sane and consistent with free software principles.

  * <http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/canadian-copyright-reform-c-61>

## New Zealand in urgent danger of software patents

The New Zealand government has proposed allowing unlimited software
patenting.  They are accepting comments until July 2nd, but
participation from the people who will be harmed seems very low.
The details of how to participate can be found on swpat.org:
 
  * <http://en.swpat.org/wiki/New_Zealand>

## Introduction to the Command Line 

Over the course of two days, the FSF and FLOSS Manuals collaborated
together on a Book Sprint at the LibrePlanet event in Boston.
Together, and with the help of many contributors, a new textbook
entitled "Introduction to the Command Line" was produced for
GNU/Linux newbies to learn how to use the command line.

  * <http://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/introduction-to-the-command-line>

## GNU Spotlight with Karl Berry

Updated GNU packages for this month:

autogen-5.9.8 automake-1.11 coreutils-7.4 ed-1.3       freeipmi-0.7.9
glibc-2.10.1  gmp-4.3.1     gnun-0.3      gnuradio-3.2 libmicrohttpd-0.4.2
libtasn1-2.2  ocrad-0.18    octave-3.2.0  pycdio-0.15
source-highlight-3.0.1      xnee-3.03

To get announcements of most new GNU packages, 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>).

I'd like to give a warm welcome to Arun Persaud, newly-dubbed
co-maintainer of xboard. Also, thanks to Simon Josefsson, already
maintainer of many GNU packages, for the new GNU package libtasn1.

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, <address@hidden>, with any
GNUish questions or suggestions for future installments.

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

* June 25 | Fundacion Software Libre América Latina -- Porto Alegre, Brazil

* June 25 | Copyright vs. Community -- Porto Alegre, Brazil

* June 27 | The Danger of Software Patents -- Porto Alegre, Brazil
 
* July 7 | Free Software and the GNU/Linux Desktop -- Las Palmas, Gran Canaria

* <http://www.fsf.org/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 © 2009 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-No
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