Issue 12 Bulletin June 2008

ries of short videos about GNU and Contents . The first video, which will be airing on .org to coincide GNU is 25! 1 with the anniversary, explains free soft- ware to a new generation of people, The Wikipedia 2 and encourages them to download and Naming Controversy try gNewSense. These videos, coupled with a fresh new look for gnu.org and The Last Mile is 4 upcoming membership events in Port- Always the Hardest land and San Francisco, promise to make the 25th anniversary something The Free Software 6 really special. Jobs Page You can help too! We are looking for any relics of GNU and FSF history Volunteer Spotlight: 7 that you may have lying around. If Yavor Doganov they’re something you can email, feel free to send them to campaigns@fsf. End Software 9 org, and if they’re something a little Patents more tangible, drop us a line and if they’re something of interest, we’d love Free Software 11 to see them. Supporter The most important thing of course is that GNU continues to grow, and continues to stand up for freedom in a potentially hostile world. Twenty- GNU is 25! five years ago, the threats to our free- dom came from proprietary operat- by Matt Lee ing systems. Thankfully these days, Campaigns Manager we have a few completely free dis- fter some difficult developmental tributions of the GNU operating sys- Ayears, this September marks the tem, but we must not become compla- 25th birthday of GNU, and we’re go- cent. in the form Happy 25, GNU! ing to be celebrating in style. We spent of popular programs like Flash and most of May working in close contact Skype are constantly seducing many with a well-known celebrity, shooting in our community to use proprietary the first of what we hope will be a se- software, and we must stand up to it,

12 1 first by installing and using a distribu- monality are the paramount concerns. Free Software Supporter tion of GNU that values freedom, such Calling the system “GNU/” is How to Contribute as gNewSense, but also by encouraging more factually accurate, as the GNU As many of you know we recently others to do so, even if it is at the cost project largely forms the base of all dis- rolled out the Free Software Sup- Associate Membership: Be- of some convenience. tributions of the operating system. For porter, the ’s come a “card-carrying” associate Our past experience gives us every example, GNU packages accounts for monthly news digest and action up- member of the FSF. Bene- reason to believe that we will succeed, 14.79% of the 16.5GB of source pack- date. Over the past six months over fits include a copy of Richard but it’s going to take a lot of work. ages used to build the Main repository 6,000 people have subscribed to the list Stallman’s book, Free Software Here’s to another twenty-five, GNU! of the gNewSense GNU/Linux distri- ([email protected]) and are receiv- Free Society or an FSF USB bution (deltad). They also constitute ing the newsletter. You can subscribe Key, plus a bootable membership 6.69% of the 27GBs of source packages and read back issues at www.fsf.org/ card and e-mail forwarding. To from which the Universe repository is free-software-supporter. Special sign-up or get more information, built. Linux weighs in at about 253MB thanks go to Karl Berry for writing the visit member.fsf.org or write to and accounts for approximately 1.5% GNU Spotlight each month. [email protected]. of the source code needed to build the Main repository. Furthermore, Linux Online: Use your credit card or itself is generally built using GNU li- PayPal account to make a dona- braries and GNU tools, and on many tion at donate.fsf.org. systems depends on them being there. Phone: You can also make a However, it’s not just a matter credit card contribution by call- of accuracy as it relates to lines of ing us at +1-617-542-5942. code. It’s about the motivation and goals that got those lines written. By United Way: As a 501(c)(3) mentioning GNU, you are foreground- tax-exempt organization, the ing the ethical commitment its hack- FSF is eligible to receive United ers have to free software. The fore- Visit shop.fsf.org. Way funds. On the donor form, grounding of these principles is exactly check the “Specific Requests” This bulletin was produced using the reason why some would prefer we box and include the sentence, only free software: LaTeX, Emacs, elide GNU. While the code for the ker- “Send my gift to the Free Soft- Inkscape, GIMP, Imagemagick and nel Linux is distributed as free soft- ware Foundation, 51 Franklin Ghostview. ware under the GPL, the term “Linux” Street, 5th Floor, Boston, MA The Wikipedia Naming when applied to the whole operating 02110”. system is often used as a branding tac- Copyright c 2008 Controversy tic by companies to reduce the visibil- Free Software Foundation Buy GNU Gear: Order one of ity of the ethical aspect of free soft- 51 Franklin Street, 5th Floor our T-shirts or manuals at shop. by Joshua Gay ware. Boston, MA 02110-1301 fsf.org. You can even get a Campaigns Manager It should be understood we are not (617)542-5942 copy of Free Software Free Soci- n the English version of Wikipedia talking about a single operating system [email protected] ety signed by ! Othere is an article that discusses but rather a very large class of operat- Verbatim copying and distri- Volunteer: See fsf.org/ the naming controversy over whether ing systems, all of which have at their bution of this entire bulletin volunteer for ideas. one should call the operating system core the Linux kernel and a suite of is permitted in any medium, “GNU/Linux” or “Linux.” In that ar- libraries, programs, and utilities from provided this notice is pre- Contact [email protected] for ticle, some contend that Linux is the the GNU operating system. All distri- served. more information on sup- more popular and common name for butions of this operating system con- porting the FSF. the system. But when writing an ency- tain software from outside the GNU clopedia, neither popularity nor com- project and the Linux kernel. Further-

2 11 abstract algorithm onto a computer is — though on a significantly shorter more, the name of this system is not has made an increasing commitment to a loophole and not a real means of timetable than we had planned for. written in stone — for any given dis- free software over the years will regu- making an abstract concept physical— Now, in filing the ESP brief to the tribution you can feel free to rename it larly make statements such as, “Sun’s and was granted leave to present oral court and as we shift our strategic fo- and redistribute it under any name you GNU/Linux Offerings,” or “Sun brings argument to the en banc hearing. cus to oppose other legislative action choose. For example, I can call it the a comprehensive systems approach A joking title for this article could that might impose software patents, Josh kernel, the Josh Project, and dis- to GNU/Linux-based operating sys- have read “Microsoft briefs court to Klemens has decided to step down tribute JoshOS. However, I don’t want tems.” However, many of Sun’s part- End Software Patents (sort of).” Mi- as director of the project. Klemens to name the system after myself — I’d ners that distribute “leading, branded crosoft’s brief to the court said, “. . . a writes: want people know that they are getting GNU/Linux operating systems,” sup- patent should not be granted under GNU. press the GNU when “branding” their 103 if the inventor merely combined I always thought of the When the name is GNU, you distributions. well known computer hardware with options for reform of patent should hear, “This system exists be- Those companies that suppress the inventive but otherwise unpatentable law along two threads: cause of people who care about free- GNU name from their distributions software.” The brief is written in a roughly, the legislative or dom. Join us, value your freedom, are some of the worst offenders in not confused manner, describing how one judicial. The approaches and together we can preserve it.”1 We only distributing proprietary software, could possibly eliminate certain types are very different, involve will often refer to Linux in conjunc- but also openly developing, promoting, of software patents, if found worthy very different campaigns tion with GNU, because without it, and encouraging its proliferation. In of elimination, via Section 103 of the and campaign activities, the GNU operating system would be many ways, these companies are hi- Patent Act. This confusion seems to and require different skills unable to run on thousands of dif- jacking the for mirror the business situation they find for implementation. I pri- ferent hardware platforms. However, their own gain, and their suppression themselves in, where they want to use marily talk about the law the Linux kernel project itself has not of GNU is just one way of distracting software patents to threaten free soft- and economics of the mat- made a full commitment to freedom. people from the fact that they are un- ware developers but at the same time ter, but I really do think They have included proprietary soft- willing to make an outright commit- they are one of the largest targets for that these patents are un- ware in their project, so distributions ment to free software. software patent litigation. ethical, and want to see such as blag2 and gNewSense make The marketing tactics of such com- In reaction to the hearing, ESP di- them eliminated. Work- sure that there exist versions modified panies often results in people adopt- rector Ben Klemens said, “We can be ing with the FSF has been to remove the proprietary blobs. ing the same language habits, unaware relatively optimistic about the odds fun and I would of course However, even if Linux were to of all that is at play. Even worse, that the courts will actually elimi- feel great if I had a ma- ship without blobs, GNU/Linux dis- some who know better will actually use nate patents on intangibles like soft- jor hand in saving the day tributions should still mention GNU. the marketing language as a justifica- ware. There will be twelve judges in the end. But it’s im- The fact is, there exist distributions tion for suppressing GNU because it hearing Bilski’s case, and only five of portant to distinguish be- of GNU/Linux that even contain full is “common.” I hope that the editors them are guilty of bringing us into this tween what I enjoy doing proprietary applications. The extent of Wikipedia currently engaged in this mess, and all twelve are aware that the and what will work best for to which they can do this is severely debate will stick to Wikipedia’s princi- Supreme Court will overturn a ruling a campaign aimed at the tempered by the significance of the ples and refrain from engaging in such that doesn’t do enough.” public and legislature. GNU name. The name is inseparable marketing tactics, and will refer to To date, ESP has been focused on from the ethical motivations behind GNU when talking about the class of bringing about a judicial review, be- Klemens will continue to advise the free , so anyone operating systems that are built with cause we have believed that it is the FSF as we await the Court’s ruling and trying to sell you proprietary software the GNU system. most likely path to change. When move ahead with the campaign. is going to do their best to keep that I’d like to encourage all of our we first analyzed the strategic course quiet. supporters and readers out there to for the project, Klemens predicted Sun Microsystems, a company that work hard to combat such tactics by that the courts were our only re- mentioning GNU when you see others 1This quote was taken from the essay alistic hope for directly addressing Linux, GNU, and Freedom, http://www.gnu. avoiding or suppressing it. Let them what is patentable subject matter, and org/philosophy/linux-gnu-freedom.html know that every GNU project is guar- 2 I’m happy to say that he was right www.blagblagblag.org anteed to carry freedom to the user

10 3 — freedom to run it for any purpose, almost all the way to easily available it has helped me a lot in my decision to patents have—they are little more share it with neighbors, improve it for fully free systems, but it’s still going entirely reject non-free software some than algorithms that have long been your own purposes, and modify and to take some work to finish this last years ago. held not to be patentable subject mat- redistribute your modifications for the mile. ter. benefit of the whole community. As we When purchasing a computer, free The en banc hearing was prompted reach the 25th anniversary of the GNU software supporters don’t want to buy by a series of rulings from the Supreme project, I’d like to thank GNU and a proprietary operating system license, Court that have overturned decisions the thousands of free software develop- like Windows Vista or Mac OS X. We made by the lower CAFC court, call- ers and supporters, past and present. can always reject the license, removing ing into question CAFC’s competence. And I’d like to encourage everyone else the proprietary operating system and The problem has always been that the to show their support too, by giving installing a free one — but this is a nui- CAFC was composed of patent lawyers credit where credit is due and saying sance and puts money in the pockets of with a vested interest in expanding the GNU! people who work against our freedom. scope of patent law. Now the question Sometimes a refund can (and should!) is, can they fix the mess they’ve made? be obtained for the cost of the pro- Stream Ogg Vorbis on WBUR.org at The FSF-backed End Software prietary license — but this is another www.wbur.org/listen/feed/ogg.m3u. Patents (ESP) project filed an ami- Read the blog post and letter to WBUR 10 nuisance and doesn’t communicate a cus curiae brief to the court. The at www.fsf.org/blogs/wbur-playogg clear signal to the vendor, who remains ESP brief recommends re-establishing under the impression that they sold a the Supreme Court’s rule that in- copy of Windows or Mac OS X. formation should not be patentable, Because computers are expected to End Software Patents even when claimed in tandem with be sold and used with proprietary op- a physical afterthought. The brief erating systems in this way, free soft- by Peter Brown explains that it is widely recognized ware users can end up with computers Executive Director in U.S. law that pure information is that aren’t well-supported by the free n Thursday May 8, 2008, the not patentable. Further, the Supreme software they want to run. In particu- OUnited States Court of Appeals Court has ruled three times that pure lar they can end up with network and for the Federal Circuit (CAFC), in an information does not necessarily be- video cards that require proprietary en banc hearing listened to oral ar- come patentable when recited in com- drivers. This is a problem even with guments in In Re Bilski. The Bilski bination with a physical object, such as companies like Dell and Lenovo that case is where the legal battle over soft- information written to paper or loaded are now selling systems preinstalled ware patents in the U.S. is currently into a computer’s memory. The brief with GNU/Linux. Instead of choosing being fought, and is particularly im- notes that the appeals court of the hardware that does not require propri- portant because the court has specifi- Federal Circuit ignored the Supreme The Last Mile is Always etary drivers, they have chosen to just cally requested guidance on the scope Court’s repeated rulings, and began the Hardest provide the proprietary drivers. of patentable subject matter. This “en allowing patents on information plus Fortunately, we’ve made progress banc” hearing is a very rare occur- any physical component: a formula, if by John Sullivan in this area. Los Alamos Computers3 rence; it means all twelve judges of the saved to a computer’s hard drive; a Operations Manager has been working in cooperation with court participate in the hearing and price list, if money is eventually moved; oftware licenses and patents aren’t the FSF to offer systems that come will consent or dissent with the major- not a correlation, but the act of corre- Sthe only ways proprietary software preinstalled with a free operating sys- ity ruling. lating. vendors can restrict the freedoms of tem like gNewSense4 and fully work- The case itself is about the valid- Most interestingly, the financial computer users. A key component of ing hardware. This is exciting by itself, ity of a patent for a business method services industry lead by Bank Of our overall campaign for software free- but they are also donating a portion of for managing risk costs of commodity America briefed the court in line with dom is making sure that the hardware selling. The patent is held by Bernie our arguments—that just loading an 3http://laclinux.com/gnu we buy is not an obstacle to the ex- 4 Bilski. Business method patents have http://gnewsense.org 10http://endsoftpatents.org/bilski ercise of our freedoms. We’ve made it the same essential flaw that software

4 9 ion, in the other camp. Translating beloved free system today. those sales to the FSF to further sup- and graphics applications, which have programs is more or less a monotone A translator should read and un- port free software. We will be working been notable weak spots in the past. activity, and people usually burn out derstand English well and have good with more vendors to follow their ex- Drivers aren’t the only remain- after 3-5 years. Translating documen- knowledge about our philosophy and ample. ing concern — other than the One tation is substantially harder. Trans- the various issues raised and discussed Wireless networking has in the past Laptop Per Child XO (which unfor- lating the GNU philosophy is the hard- in the articles. It is not a requirement been a real headache for people who tunately has a proprietary wireless est thing ever for a translator, because to be a fluent speaker — in fact, many want to have a fully free system. driver), there are still no laptops or it is a difficult activity that requires translators cannot speak English well There are a number of cards that desktops readily available with a free a lot of thought, understanding and but they understand it perfectly when are supported under GNU/Linux and BIOS. With the help of a grant from responsibility. Awareness about the reading. That’s the important part. they often have drivers released under the Foundation, the FSF has ethical issues that the free software Of course, time is always necessary. A the GPL or another free software li- continued working to help promote movement set out to solve is still very relatively short essay might look like cense — but those drivers depend on and support projects like coreboot7, low, which leads to the lower number a job for an hour or two, but it often chunks of proprietary binary code. To which provide a free software BIOS of translators contributing to gnu.org turns out to take days or weeks. Some- avoid these binary blobs, users have replacement. Thanks to the work of compared to, say, GNOME. times it is necessary to do some re- thus far been limited to a handful of FSF sysadmin and coreboot contribu- Matt: Have you looked at HTML search, or discuss problematic phrases, chipsets, primarily those manufactured tor Ward Vandewege, we now have free 5 at all? and this takes time. by Ralink using the rt2500 driver. BIOS desktops alongside the free BIOS Yavor: No, I dislike anything re- Translation teams play an impor- We now have an additional op- servers running in the FSF office. Sili- lated to HTML and read only what tant role by establishing the most ap- tion in the ath5k5 driver, which is de- con Mechanics has also started selling is necessary to complete the tasks I’m propriate terminology for the specific scended from Madwifi, OpenHAL, and a server pre-flashed with coreboot, and doing. Perhaps even less. I find it language and of course by present- OpenBSD’s ar5k. This driver supports we are hopeful that other vendors will ironic that W3C develops standard af- ing the philosophy of the free soft- several Atheros wireless cards without follow their lead. You can help this ter standard, each determined to solve ware movement to readers who do not requiring any binary blobs, and is in- campaign by sending positive feedback entirely all problems. And we are understand English (and very often, cluded in Linux as of version 2.6.25. to companies making such moves, and doomed to maintain all standards for- to those who understand English but The Software Freedom Law Center re- by being critical of companies like Intel ever, since no one will use a browser would not bother to read an essay in viewed the driver6 in September 2007 that continue obstructing progress.8 that cannot render a page in HTML English). and verified that it is free. There is a lot to keep up with, 2.0. The only thing I know about The most valuable “feature” a In the world of video drivers, 3D but the FSF hardware database9 has HTML 5 is that the committee re- translator could have is her dedica- acceleration has long been a sore spot been expanding as a resource to con- jected Ogg Vorbis/Theora which (pro- tion, and her determination to keep for anyone not using Intel hardware. sult before purchasing a system or vided it’s true) doesn’t make me feel going; her firm belief that translating But late last year ATI announced that accessories. You can find valuable excited and filled with hope. these essays is a job that is useful for it would be releasing code and spec- information there about which exact Matt: If someone wanted to get in- the society. Everything else, like small ifications to assist the community in chipsets and models are known to work volved with translating gnu.org, what technical skills, the usual translator’s development of fully capable free soft- with fully free GNU/Linux systems. is the work like? What kind of skills “sense”, etc., will get settled by itself, ware drivers for all of its newer Radeon The information comes from the test- do they need? one way or another. chipsets. Based on steps they have al- ing we do at the FSF and from peo- Yavor: Well, the work is enormous Matt: And finally, what’s your fa- ready taken, it does appear that they ple around the world who send us given the fact of how many articles are vorite piece of free software? intend to follow through on this com- their working hardware configurations. available to translate. Even if we count Yavor: GNU Emacs, undoubtedly. mitment. VIA very recently made a We can always use more volunteers only the essays, and only the most im- Emacs is special in so many ways that similar announcement, but has yet to to help us process the information we portant essays, it is still a titanic effort it is impossible to explain its nature to take action. Widespread free software receive. If you have some time and for a new language. But don’t despair, someone who has not seen/used it. It drivers supporting 3D acceleration will would like to help by maintaining a sec- GNU was not built in one day! If the is most definitely one of the Wonders undoubtedly help free software games 7http://coreboot.org amount of work had scared away the of the World but unlike them it keeps 5 8 http://madwifi.org/wiki/About/ath5k http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/ countless number of GNU maintainers surprising you every day. I use Emacs 6http://www.softwarefreedom.org/ free-bios.html 9 and contributors, we wouldn’t have our for absolutely everything; I also believe resources/2007/ath5k-code-analysis.html http://fsf.org/resources/hw

8 5 tion of the database, please write to us best and most motivated people. Volunteer Spotlight: updating many articles is possible with at [email protected]. Getting com- We’re putting employers in touch with Yavor Doganov little effort. monly available hardware to be fully dedicated job-seekers who are part of The overall benefits for gnu.org compatible with free software is a crit- our community, people who are dedi- with Matt Lee are also worth mentioning. Since ical component of the FSF’s mission, cated to seeing free software succeed, Campaigns Manager translations automatically follow the and it’s a great way you can make a people like you who want to get paid avor Doganov is the translations markup of the original articles, it difference. We’re almost there — we for doing what they love. Ycoordinator for gnu.org and the would be possible to update them at just need to get that last mile. The FSF is a 23-year-old nonprofit author of GNUnited Nations, a new once when we move to a new standard. with thousands of members and sup- project which hopes to make manage- If a team becomes understaffed and porters like you who regularly frequent ment of translations significantly eas- undermaintained, its translations will our web site to keep in touch with the ier. He lives in Bulgaria. not rot but will get rebuilt automati- free software world. Our web sites get Questions were asked by Matt Lee, cally following the changes in the orig- over 100,000 page views a day and our FSF campaigns manager. inals. Of course, this means mixed na- jobs page is always on the first search Matt: Yavor, you’ve been working tive/English language but we will turn page for software jobs. Plus, you can on a new system for handling transla- this slight annoyance to be our ally: we trust us not to list just any jobs — tions on our website. What’s it called, will identify teams that need attention we’re only posting free software jobs. and how does it work? and will try to attract new volunteers. Our members and supporters have Yavor: Yes, it is called GNUnited Matt: What are the biggest chal- already been spreading the word, by Nations (or GNUN for short). The lenges with the translation of gnu.org? emailing their HR departments and name is, as you may guess, a pun of Yavor: I think GNUnited Nations DefectiveByDesign.org action alert! friends who work at free software com- United Nations (UN). will solve most of the technical as- Tell libraries to kick DRM out. panies. So list a job, find yourself GNUN works much like GNU pects of the problem. We will enhance Sign the letter at defectivebyde- a job or share the news with some- gettext works for programs or like the system to make it work for peo- sign.org/LetterToLibraries one else who’s looking! Visit http: the GNOME Documentation Utilities ple who are not comfortable working //fsf.org/jobs. (gnome-doc-utils) work for transla- on the GNU/Linux console, and will tions of GNOME manuals. For years, implement some sort of web-based au- The Free Software Jobs translators had to duplicate the HTML tomatic statistics. markup and examine changes as diffs But this is only part of the job, the Page between revisions of the original arti- eaiser part. The biggest challenge in cle(s). This is extremely tedious and gnu.org translation is the lack of vol- by Deborah Nicholson error prone, which is why the GNOME unteers, or more precisely, the constant Directory Maintainer Project has developed its own package lack of devoted contributors. This As a free software supporter, wouldn’t to handle translations of the manuals should not be surprising to anyone, you like to get paid for contribut- (whose source is DocBook). though. In the Free World, people usu- ing to our community? Maybe you The source of almost all gnu.org ally work on what they like and they already do but you’re sick of all that articles is XHTML, so GNUN con- switch to something else once they lose California sunshine or maybe you work verts each article to a PO template, interest. The most appropriate exam- somewhere that “pays the bills” but and each translation has its own PO ple for a job that is always exciting will never be able to buy your respect. file. The benefit is tremendous, be- and rewarding is being a programmer. That’s why we’ve put together the cause if the original article changes, Most programmers work on what they free software jobs page — to help you each of its article.LANG.PO files is up- enjoy, and they switch projects as time find your dream job, whether it’s right dated automatically, and subsequently goes by (well, sometimes). Program- around the corner or halfway around all of the HTML translations are re- ming is facing challenges every day, the world. built. The translator can easily iden- and finding (clever) ways to solve prob- Our community is stronger when tify the changes using a PO editor and lems. free software companies employ the Translators are, in my humble opin-

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