Copyright c 2011 How to Contribute 51 Franklin Street, 5th Floor Boston, MA 02110-1301 Associate Membership: (617) 542-5942 Become an associate member of [email protected] the FSF. Members will receive http://www.fsf.org/ a bootable USB card and e-mail Issue 19 Bulletin November 2011 forwarding. To sign up or get If you recently joined as a more information, visit member. member, your mailing includes fsf.org or write to membership@ Born to run a USB flash drive membership fsf.org. Contents card preloaded with a full live by John Sullivan distribution of Trisquel 4.0. Online: Use your credit card or Borntorun 1 Executive Director You can download source code PayPal account to make a dona- The new Free Software 3 for the distribution at http: tion at donate.fsf.org or con- Directory //fsf.org/associate/source/. tact [email protected] for more Automating systems at 4 If you would like us to send you information on supporting the the FSF primary goal of the Free Soft- the source code on two DVDs FSF. A PlayFreedom campaign 5 ware Foundation is a world where for 5 dollars, please write to Jobs: List your job offers on our Holiday Buying Guide 5 everyone can do what they need to [email protected] or at the address jobs page. See fsf.org/jobs for Growing trends in free 7 do with their computers using only above. details. software licensing free software. Great progress has been GNU contributors 7 made toward this goal. Free software This bulletin was produced using United Way: As a 501(c)(3) update has reached a point where it is now eas- only free software. tax-exempt organization, the In defense of negativity 8 ily possible to buy an affordable com- FSF is eligible to receive United How I became aware of 10 puter with hardware — including Wi- The articles in this bulletin are Way funds. See fsf.org/uw for free software Fi and accelerated graphics — that is individually licensed under the more information. fully supported by free software (an ex- Attribu- cellent resource for choosing appropri- Free Software Directory tion No Derivative Works : ate hardware is h-node.com). 3.0 United States License. Browse and download from thou- But just when our community has To view a copy of this license, sands of different free software achieved this, we are faced with the visit http://creativecommons. projects! directory.fsf.org possibility that most computers in the org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/us/ Volunteer: To learn more, visit future could be made by design incom- or send a letter to Creative Com- fsf.org/volunteer. patible with free software. They will mons, 171 Second Street, Suite be born to run only proprietary oper- 300, San Francisco, California, Free Software Supporter: ating systems. 94105, USA. Make sure you’re getting all the Microsoft has recently announced very latest news from the FSF at that if computer makers wish to dis- fsf.org/fss. tribute machines with the Windows 8 compatibility logo, they will have to LibrePlanet : Find local groups implement a measure called “Secure in your area or start your own at Boot.” However, it is currently up for libreplanet.org! grabs whether this technology will live The new baby gnu from shop.fsf.org (brick wall not included) up to its name, or will instead earn the

12 1 name Restricted Boot.1 As an FSF supporter, I don’t need to be superior compared to closed ers. This idea strongly resonated with When done correctly, “Secure to tell you how frightening and un- source software because anyone could me because of the incident with my Boot” is designed to protect against acceptable expansion of this trend to take part in the development process, laptop. Free software would ensure malware by preventing computers from other computers would be. Users fix bugs, and innovate. But there that users are not beholden to compa- loading unauthorized binary programs would have to go through complicated were plenty of instances where I felt nies to use their own computers. when booting. In effect, this means and risky measures to circumvent the the closed sourced software was clearly Free software even addresses the is- that computers implementing it won’t restrictions; the popular trend of re- better than its counter- sues I had with open source. It doesn’t boot unauthorized operating systems. viving old hardware with GNU/Linux part. For example, it was much easier matter if proprietary software is tech- This could be a feature deserving would come to an end, causing more to create high-quality presentations in nically superior; it fails the most basic of the name, as long as the user is able hardware to be tossed in landfills; and Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 compared test of providing freedom to users. We to authorize the programs she wants proprietary operating system compa- to OpenOffice.org at the time. Why just have to develop alternatives that to use, so she can run free software nies would gain a giant advantage over was it that companies such as Apple do. The idea of free software sits very written and modified by herself or peo- the , because of and Microsoft were regularly able to well with me. There truly is something ple she trusts, and not run software by their connections with manufacturers. create software that was technically su- magical about being able to study how people she doesn’t trust. This should This summer, we launched a lo- perior to the open source movement’s any of the software I’m using works also extend to the firmware (which cal initiative we’re calling Free Soft- if open source was supposed to be bet- and make changes. performs much the same tasks as the ware Fridays, where FSF staff and ter? I’m taking steps to contribute to BIOS on other computers); users must volunteers went out into the busy While searching for satisfying an- free software and advance it. Count- be able to replace their computers’ pro- Boston downtown area at lunch time, swers to my questions, I noticed some- less like-minded people have done so prietary firmware with free software. and handed out copies of Trisquel thing interesting in discussions about despite facing tremendous challenges However, we are concerned that GNU/Linux. In addition to the open source: a few people often used and discouragement. In the process, Microsoft and hardware manufacturers GNU/Linux operating system, we have the terms “FOSS” or “FLOSS.” I they have made society a better and will collude to implement these boot future plans to distribute copies of found they stood for “free/open source freer place. I don’t see why I can’t join restrictions in a way that will prevent other useful cross-platform free soft- software” and “free/libre/open source them and do the same. users from changing the firmware or ware like LibreOffice, so that even peo- software” respectively. I wondered booting anything other than Windows. ple still stuck on proprietary operat- why anyone would attach “free” next In this case, a better name for the tech- ing systems can start giving free soft- to “open source,” and I found “libre” nology would be Restricted Boot, since ware a try. This is the easiest, most just confusing. So I looked up free soft- such a requirement would be a dis- basic form of free software activism — ware and found that it was backed by astrous restriction on computer users sharing software with your community. the Free Software Foundation (FSF). and not a security feature at all. And it would be made impossible if Re- Intrigued by what this foundation The specter of Restricted Boot is stricted Boot were pushed on users un- stood for, I explored their Web site and especially worrisome because it is not der the guise of “security.” found that they were going to release alone. Some of the most successful mo- We will be monitoring develop- new editions of their books explaining bile devices (Apple’s iPhone and iPad, ments in this area closely, and ac- free software and its motivations soon. and many Android phones) enforce re- tively campaigning to make sure this A few months ago, the books became strictions aimed at preventing users important freedom is protected. Our available for purchase, and I bought from installing a different or modified first step is to demonstrate that people them almost immediately. operating system — despite the fact value this freedom, and will not pur- Everything started to click in my that they are general purpose comput- chase or recommend computers that mind when I read the books. The fun- ers. Apple seems to be moving toward attempt to restrict it. If you aren’t damental principle of free software is a similar world for their desktop and one of the 20,000 people who have al- that users should have basic freedoms laptop systems. ready signed our statement affirming over their software. This includes the that, I hope you will take a minute to freedom to study how a software works, 1fsf.org/campaigns/ secure-boot-vs-restricted-boot to modify it, and to share the soft- ware and any modifications with oth-

2 11 I found a GNU/Linux distribution add your name.2 already listed there. What we haven’t and used it to boot my laptop. It It has been very encouraging to written about is how you can begin to started up correctly and detected my see so much support behind this state- help improve the functionality, design, hard disk. Feeling optimistic, I tried ment. This support has not only come and user experience of the Directory — copying my files onto a thumb drive, in the form of signatures — we also just by editing pages on the Web site! and it worked! I was extremely re- welcomed 80 new members and many One of the coolest things about the lieved. This meant I didn’t have to new donors to the FSF in the month new Directory is the functionality pro- redo my assignment from scratch after after publishing the statement. Such vided by MediaWiki and over a dozen all. As I stared at the pop-up show- financial support empowers us to am- extensions, including Semantic Media- ing me the copy’s progress, it suddenly plify your voice and take action on crit- Wiki and Semantic Forms. Together, Working together for free software by oth- struck me that all along, Microsoft was ical threats like this. If you aren’t they offer a plethora of development ree on Flickr holding me hostage to my own data! already a member, please join us at tools for the wiki: An operating system stores files on fsf.org/jfb. If you are a member, How I became aware of a hard disk in some structured for- thank you! I hope you can double • template macros mat. In Windows XP and later ver- your contribution this year by talking • an HTML form system to popu- free software sions of the operating system, the for- to a friend or colleague about why you late templates mat used is usually NTFS. As the think free software is such an impor- by Ali Razeen NTFS specifications have not been re- tant cause, and why now would be a Free Software Activist • typed variables leased by Microsoft, it turns out I de- great time for them to join you in sup- pended on Microsoft to be able to ac- porting it. • SQL-style queries to find and list cess and modify my own data. I was We have reason to be optimistic pages able to use GNU/Linux to get back that Restricted Boot will not become entered college four years ago, and • built-in formatting functions for my files only because talented hackers a reality. But this is too important to Ilike most college students, I relied HTML, RSS, JSON, and more heavily on my laptop, which ran Win- spent countless hours figuring out how sit and wait for companies to do the dows XP. One day, when I turned NTFS works. I wouldn’t be as lucky right thing. They need to hear from • dozens of array and string func- it on to get some work done, I was next time if Microsoft used a format you. We will do as much as we can on tions greeted with an error message; some- that was tougher to reverse engineer your behalf, but we need your support thing failed during the boot process in the future. to get it done. If you look at the source of any page and Windows couldn’t load, not even This realization didn’t sit well with on the wiki, odds are you’ll find ex- me, and a couple of things happened. tensive use of nested templates, con- in Safe Mode. I tried to fix the issue The new Free Software by using the repair option on the Win- First, when I reinstalled Windows on ditional statements, complex queries, dows XP setup disc, but that didn’t my laptop, I made a separate parti- Directory and other powerful semantic features. work either. tion using the Extended file system, a If you are interested in trying out format whose specifications are freely by Josh Gay some of these tools, a great place to I was frustrated because everything 3 was fine the last time I used my laptop. available, and stored all my data there. Campaigns Manager start is our quick hacking tutorial. The usual recovery methods weren’t That ensured I didn’t need Microsoft’s This will teach you the basics of how working. Reinstalling Windows wasn’t help to access my own work should to edit your user page, use and cre- an option because doing so would have Windows fail again. Second, I paid ate templates, query the directory, cre- n September we relaunched the Free erased my school work. My assign- close attention to the numerous discus- ate and manipulate arrays, and much ISoftware Directory. We have written ment was due very soon and I re- sions held on sites such as Slashdot. more. a lot about our new plans for the Direc- ally needed to work on it. Racking Very quickly, I became a fan of open We hope that you will try out our tory and how you can help us improve my mind desperately for solutions, I source and extolled its benefits to my tutorial and help us improve the look, and build on more than 6,500 packages remembered discussions on Slashdot friends. feel, and functionality of the Free Soft- But before long, I started having is- 2 ware Directory! about how people used GNU/Linux to fsf.org/campaigns/ sues with open source. The way I un- fix their Windows problems. secure-boot-vs-restricted-boot/ 3directory.fsf.org/hack derstood it, open source was supposed statement

10 3 Automating systems at tion stanza, so it is also possible to do software, software patents, DRM, cen- ethical weight to these other causes, I the FSF things that are specific to one machine. tralized network services, and the firms know that the free software mission is Here are some of the things that we behind these practices. I’ve done so be- similar in kind. by Ward Vandewege now do with Puppet, rather than by cause I believe that if one is taking an Of course, if one does not think Chief Technology Officer hand: ethical position, it is justified, and of- that user control over technology is ten necessary, to not only speak about an ethical issue but is instead merely • install appropriate software pack- the benefits of freedom but against a matter of choice, one will proba- ages, and standard GNU/FSF acts of dispossession and disenfran- bly oppose negative campaigns. It is he sysadmins at the FSF have put configurations for them chisement. also possible that a particular negative Tgreat effort into consolidating our In some of the most effective social campaign is tactically unwise in that • create and manage user accounts server infrastructure over the past 12 movements, unambiguously negative it is unlikely to reach a large audience, months. We have retired more than • distribute SSH public keys and messages have been central. Should unlikely to change people’s minds, or a dozen servers in the process, and SSL certificates a campaign for abolishing child labor difficult to carry out successfully. But now host most of our infrastructure talk only about how valuable adult such campaigns are a bad idea because on three potent machines with many • update xen-tools configurations workers are to their employers, or how they are ineffective, not because they CPU cores, ample RAM, and plenty on virtualization host systems happy kids are when they don’t work? are negative. Additionally, a move- of disk space. As you may know, we Should a campaign trying to abolish ment that is purely negative and of- use Xen to virtualize our servers. Vir- We create new virtual machines land mines talk only about the bene- fers no reasonable alternative to the tualization allows us to securely par- with xen-tools, which pulls in the Pup- fits of bomb-free fields and intact lower stated ill may also be unlikely to suc- tition our servers into many virtual pet packages. We then add the new limbs? Should a free speech organi- ceed. This is why, for example, I be- machines, each dedicated to a limited virtual machine to our Puppet con- zation only speak out about the so- lieve it is good that the FSF uses the number of tasks. figuration, which pulls in the default cial welfare brought by a free press large majority of its resources in the We have also embarked on a jour- GNU/FSF configuration without any and never against acts of censorship? “positive” role of supporting free soft- ney to automate our systems configu- additional work on our part. We save These may seem like outlandish com- ware. ration as much as possible. We have a lot of time setting up new machines, parisons but you can find people writ- For those that do treat technolog- selected Puppet, a systems configura- and we get peace of mind: all our sys- ing, only a couple centuries ago, about ical empowerment as an ethical ideal, tion management and automation tool, tems under Puppet’s control are guar- how slavery should be abolished by ar- it is both justified and essential to con- to help in that task. anteed to have our standard configura- guing in favor of the benefits of paid demn the systematic disempowerment One of the advantages of Puppet tion. labor. Even if the economic arguments of others through nonfree software just is that one can start small. Once a We are currently working towards in favor of paid work are strong, these as we celebrate the benefits of soft- system is under Puppet’s control, it the goal of generating our automated arguments seem irrelevant and offen- ware freedom. “Negative” campaigns is easy to expand the Puppet config- systems monitoring configuration from sive today. Whether slavery is more or against proprietary software, software uration over time, and thus automate our Puppet configuration. This re- less efficient is a moot point. Society patents, and DRM in music have al- more and more of it. We started out quires us to migrate more service con- has rejected it because it is wrong. ready led our community to important with a very limited configuration that figurations to Puppet. With enough We have made important strides — if incomplete — victories. The de- defined some settings that are common of that done, it should be possible toward eliminating injustices like child sire to right wrongs has been a critical to all our systems — for instance, mak- for Puppet to know that, for instance, labor and slavery because activists part of our movement’s success and of ing sure the sshd configuration is se- www.gnu.org runs a web server on port waged decidedly negative campaigns many others’. We would be wise not cure. Puppet makes it easy to differ- 80. With that knowledge, Puppet can against them and convinced others to to give it up. entiate rules based on “facts” about a instruct our monitoring hosts to check join in opposition. In doing so, ac- machine, like the version of the oper- for the availability of that service, all tivists declared the status quo uncon- ating system it runs, or whether the without manual intervention from the scionable and created an ethical re- system is a physical server or a vir- sysadmins. sponsibility to find alternatives and to tual machine. Each system under Pup- I would like to conclude this article redefine what was “realistic.” While pet’s control gets its own configura- with a brief word of thanks to Bernie I will not suggest that the movement Innocenti, who left the FSF for another for software freedom is comparable in

4 9 FSF has for many years taken copy- the vagaries of the international postal job in September. We are extremely Here, PlayFreedom supporters will find right assignments on many GNU pack- system. grateful for his contributions as an FSF links to blog posts, action items, and ages. Thousands have contributed to Together, these changes will make sysadmin; he was instrumental in the suggestions on how to get involved and FSF-assigned packages like the GNU it easier than ever to contribute, and server consolidation and Puppet setup promote free media formats. Compiler Collection (GCC) and GNU hopefully encourage more hackers to efforts described here. While we put the finishing touches Emacs, but the assignment process has help the GNU Project. on this campaign, you can let us know always created a slight barrier for new about any sites you’d like to see fea- contributors. That is why we were so PlayFreedom campaign tured on the Web site, or any tools happy in October when we announced In defense of negativity you think we might not have heard of by Matt Lee two major changes to how we handle by emailing us at [email protected]. by Mako Hill Campaigns Manager assignments at the FSF. To stay up to date on our progress, join Director, Free Software Founda- Our lawyers at the Software Free- the mailing list at playfreedom.org. tion dom Law Center have given us the go-ahead to begin accepting scanned layFreedom is a new campaign copies of assignments from contribu- Pfrom the Free Software Founda- tors located in the United States. We often hear criticism of “negative tion. You can think of it as the succes- Holiday Buying Guide are in the process of researching if we Icampaigning” in the free software sor to our PlayOgg campaign; our ef- can accept scanned documents from by Josh Gay movement. For example, in reply to forts there will be rolled into PlayFree- Campaigns Manager contributors based in other countries. a blog post I once wrote about an dom. As we hear back from lawyers from aro- FSF campaign, several people argued PlayFreedom aims to promote all und the world, we will be updating our against “negative campaigning of any kinds of free media formats: for now, list of countries where scanned docu- sort, in any realm.” Drawing an anal- that means Google’s new WebM for- ith the holidays fast approach- ments can be accepted. ogy to political smear campaigns, some mat and the entire Ogg family from Wing, we thought a holiday buyer’s But even for contributors in coun- members of the free software commu- Xiph, including Theora, Vorbis, Speex, guide was appropriate. People often tries where scanned assignments can- nity have taken the position that nega- and FLAC. The Web site will have buy expensive electronic gadgets as not be accepted, we have implemented tive campaigning in general is not use- three main sections: Tools, Showcase gifts, but many of these gadgets are a change that significantly speeds up ful and that negativity has no place in and Activism. bad for your freedom. the assignment process. Instead of our advocacy. “Tools” provides information about Here’s our guide to the best and mailing forms via the postal service to First, it is important to be clear free software you can use to produce, worst gifts this season: each contributor, we now simply email on what we mean by a negative cam- edit, and work with free media for- Video games — With all of the a PDF of the assignment that the con- paigns. I believe that there is a fun- mats. Whether you’re simply look- big game console manufacturers sup- tributor can print themselves. Previ- damental difference between speaking ing for a program to play video, or porting and using more Digital Re- ously, we would only accept forms that out against policies or actions and the tools you need to edit and publish strictions Management (DRM) in their were printed on our letterhead, in or- smear campaigns that employ untrue a movie with free formats, you’ll find products, there aren’t good options der to ensure that the form was not claims, ad hominem attacks, and that what you need here. here. But in particular, avoid Sony, changed. As the number of contribu- attempt to avoid a real conversation “Showcase” is an area of the site since they have been aggressively pros- tors from around the world grows, rely- about issues. I will categorically con- where we’ll be showing you some of ecuting users (defectivebydesign. ing on the postal service is increasingly demn the latter form of smear cam- the best video and audio around, all org/sony), and Nintendo, since they inefficient. Hence, we decided to start paigning in campaigns for software in free formats. Part of this will in- claim the right to remotely “brick” sending forms electronically, reducing freedom or for anything else. clude an exhaustive list of all known some devices (defectivebydesign. transit times and ensuring more con- That said, negativity directed at free media sites, including radio sta- org/nintendo). sistent delivery. negativity has had a positive effect tions, music download services, bands, Blu-Ray — Avoid Blu-Ray discs. Accepting scanned documents will in many social movements. I have filmmakers, and community sites. They cannot be used with free soft- greatly cut down delays in the as- supported and participated in “neg- “Activism” helps us all push free ware, and buying them is supporting signment process, and using electronic ative” campaigns against proprietary media formats to success in new areas. forms wherever possible will help avoid

8 5 Old Media’s latest system for control- Instead of buying gifts that reward Growing trends in free Ruby, which recently started using a ling every step of what users can do companies who restrict our freedom, software licensing 2-clause BSD license where they used with media they buy. consider making a donation to a char- to use GPLv2. However, much like Music players — For music this ity that fights for your freedom – other by Brett Smith Perl before it, Ruby has always been season, don’t look to Apple for any- than ourselves, we’re especially fond of License Compliance Engineer dual licensed, and the second license thing; all their portable music players the work done by the Electronic Fron- has never provided a strong . support DRM and many devices refuse tier Foundation, Creative Commons, The developers didn’t make this switch to work on GNU/Linux without seri- and Public Knowledge. to move away from copyleft, but to ous tinkering or jailbreaking. ately I’ve noticed an uptick in the make Ruby code compatible with more Cars — If you’re thinking of buy- Lnumber of pundits who claim that licenses: they even specifically men- ing a new car, be sure to avoid cars free software developers have begun tioned GPLv3 compatibility in their with the MyFord Touch and MyLin- to prefer using lax free software li- rationale. coln Touch software. Glitches in this censes that don’t have copyleft (like It seems undeniable that lax li- proprietary software have led Ford to the Apache License) over ones that do censes like the Apache License are used issue an update. This means the car (like the GPL) for their projects. They by more projects today than before, can be infected with malicious software back up this claim by pointing to sur- but that growth doesn’t necessarily and is best avoided. veys that show increased adoption of come at copyleft’s expense. Instead, Smartphones — Replicant, the lax licenses in free software projects, or I see this growth coming from two project to produce a fully free distri- high-profile projects that have recently places. First, as more new free soft- bution of Android recently added more adopted such licenses. That evidence ware projects are constantly released, phones to its list of supported models. tells a different story, however, when of course some of them will be under Here at the FSF, we scored a bounty you better understand its background. lax licenses — that’s always been true. of HTC Dream phones, and many of Typically, surveys show upticks in Second, more developers understand us use them as our day-to-day cell lax license adoption when they start the importance of license compatibil- phones. These phones are still prob- counting projects on sites that are ity, and are switching from unpopular lematic, because they include a propri- more specialized than general-purpose so-called “vanity licenses” to standard etary firmware that could monitor all hosting sites like Savannah and Source- licenses that are widely recognized and activity on the phone, but the ability Forge. For example, one such sur- respected. These migrations help users to have a fully free application environ- vey saw a huge one-month increase to better understand their rights, and ment is a great step forward. in the use of Microsoft’s free software developers to know how they can com- Ebook readers — All the ebook licenses simply because they started bine the code with other projects. readers sold through Amazon and counting projects on the Microsoft- Increased use of lax licenses doesn’t Barnes & Noble use DRM and propri- backed CodePlex hosting site. These mean that copyleft is losing. It means etary software. Even if a user manages projects deserve to be counted just like that free software is gaining ground. to only use these devices to read DRM- any other, but their dramatic one-time http://defectivebydesign.org/holiday free materials, purchase of the device effect on a survey doesn’t represent the includes licenses for DRM and propri- kind of licensing sea change the ac- GNU contributors etary software. companying headlines would suggest. update Laptops and Desktops — There I have not seen a survey rigorous are a couple of companies who will enough to demonstrate that new proj- by Donald Robertson sell you a computer with a fully-free ects choose copyleft licenses in fewer Copyright Administrator GNU/Linux distribution preinstalled. numbers than before. Some of these companies even do- Similarly, news about high-profile nate a small amount of money to the projects adopting lax licenses often FSF. One such company is Los Alamos fails to tell the whole story. The s part of our mission to protect Computers, laclinux.com/gnu. most recent example I’m aware of is Aand promote free software, the

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