Copyright c 2009 Free Software Foundation 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 15 Bulletin November 2009 forwarding. To sign-up or get This bulletin was produced using more information, visit member. only free software. fsf.org or write to membership@ and some of the upcoming projects for fsf.org. Contents us here at the FSF. The articles in this bulletin are Our Web site, www.fsf.org, has individually licensed under the Online: Use your credit card or Welcome to the Bulletin 1 also been updated to reflect our cur- Creative Commons Attribu- PayPal account to make a dona- FSFin2009 2 rent fundraising drive, with video tion No Derivative Works tion at donate.fsf.org or con- Life in the Licensing 4 features from prominent members of 3.0 United States License. tact [email protected] for more Compliance Lab the free software community, includ- To view a copy of this license, information on supporting the The importance of 5 ing Samba developer Jeremy Allison, visit http://creativecommons. FSF. individual membership hardware designer for the $100 lap- org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/us/ Jobs: List your job offers on our Software for education, 6 top, Mary Lou Jepsen, long-term GNU or send a letter to Creative Com- jobs page. See fsf.org/jobs for not babysitting hacker and the present lead developer mons, 171 Second Street, Suite details. Campaigns Update 7 of Gnash, Rob Savoye, and copyright 300, San Francisco, California, End Software Patents 7 activist Cory Doctorow. 94105, USA. United Way: As a 501(c)(3) The computer in my 9 These videos represent the van- tax-exempt organization, the pocket guard of what is possible on the Web FSF is eligible to receive United now — with support for the free Ogg Way funds. See fsf.org/uw for Theora and Vorbis multimedia formats more information. Welcome to the Bul- built into many of the Web browsers Free Software Directory: being used, we can bring more inter- Browse and download from thou- letin active and engaging video media to sands of different free software our advocacy work. As an example of by Matt Lee projects! directory.fsf.org this, we’ve dug up a video of former Campaigns manager campaigns manager and now opera- Volunteer: To learn more, visit elcome to another issue of the tions manager, John Sullivan, from the fsf.org/volunteer. WFree Software Foundation Bul- archives. This video, shot in 2007, fea- letin. Right now, we’re in the middle tures John explaining the basics of free Free Software Supporter: of our busy fundraising season. As a software and makes an excellent intro- Make sure you’re getting all the supporter of the Free Software Foun- duction to the subject for any newcom- very latest news from the FSF at shop.fsf.org dation, we depend on your generosity ers, as well as providing a good exam- fsf.org/fss. — in the form of donations and asso- ple of how our various campaigns re- ciate memberships — to do the work LibrePlanet: Find local groups late to each other. Work done by the we do. So, in a change of pace from in your area or start your own at pioneering Xiph.org hackers and advo- our usual Bulletin format, I have asked libreplanet.org! cacy from PlayOgg is now affecting real the staff at the Free Software Founda- change in all of the FSF’s campaign ac- tion to give an update on how your fi- tions. nancial support has been used recently, 12 1 FSF in 2009 tem, register those copyrights with the laptops. Ubuntu’s decision to ship a We must not forget that, in almost US Copyright Office, and use the copy- new binary driver remains more con- all cases, these computers remain con- by Peter Brown right system to enforce the terms of troversial than the fact that the vast trolled, completely and ultimately, by Executive Director our copyleft licenses to guarantee re- majority of the world’s computer-using companies that very few of us trust at he free software movement is one spect for the freedom that our licenses population knows nothing other than all. Tthe most successful social move- promise, to all recipients. phone-based computers that remain al- I’m not sure how we will accom- ments to emerge in the past 25 years, Third, we campaign to raise aware- most unthinkably unfree and which re- plish this task. But more of us need to driven by a worldwide community of ness of the ethical benefits of free soft- main almost entirely unfreeable when think long, hard, and creatively about ethical programmers dedicated to free- ware and against the use of proprietary compared to personal computers. For this problem. I’ll be calling my phone dom and sharing. Its impact on our fu- software. Our campaign against Dig- most of the world’s computer users, “my computer” as a first, very per- ture is growing every day. But the ulti- ital Restrictions Management (DRM) there is no option of, and essentially sonal, step. I have done this over the mate success of the free software move- at defectivebydesign.org turned ac- no hope for, freedom on their current last week and it has led to some conver- ment depends on teaching our friends, ceptance of anti-user technology mea- devices. sations with slightly confused acquain- neighbors and work colleagues to rec- sures into a public campaign that It shocks me that anyone, espe- tances. Of course, this doesn’t make ognize the danger of not having soft- now makes DRM systems highly un- cially free software advocates, would my phone any less free. But it does ware freedom — a freedom that they popular. Our successful campaign happily put up with such nonfree com- mean I’m talking more about the non- have lost, often without recognizing it, against adoption of Windows Vista, puters. I think part of the reason lies freeness most of us have put up with to proprietary software. and our new campaign against Win- in the fact that most users of mobile too silently. The FSF is currently working on dows 7, have raised widespread con- phones, and even most phone users At this stage, that seems like three fronts to advance the cause of cern about how proprietary software that care about software freedom and progress. the free software movement. First, works against the interest of all cit- technological autonomy, don’t think of in software, we sponsor the GNU izens. Our campaigns to promote their phones as computers. Thinking project and promote the adoption of free formats such as OpenDocument that our phones as computers will not fully free GNU/Linux distributions and PlayOgg have achieved widespread solve any of the problems I’ve alluded gnu.org/distros like gNewSense and support. And finally, our 20-year cam- to. But doing so remains an essen- Trisquel. We identify high prior- paign against software patents will this tial first step toward any solution. Al- ity free software projects at fsf.org/ year see our legal brief from our End though we must still work to build vi- campaigns/priority.html that need Software Patents campaign gain atten- able, widely accessible, and compelling developer focus and resources to ad- tion from the US Supreme Court in a free phones, we must first convince vance the adoption of GNU/Linux sys- landmark ruling expected in May 2010. both users and developers that this is tems, and we work to alert the commu- Of course, we do all this work in an important goal. Reminding peo- nity to threats to free software, such as collaboration with free software users ple that our phones, both free and the seduction by popular but patent- and developers like you, who volunteer nonfree, are powerful general-purpose encumbered platforms, or misleading their time to help a campaign, or who computers remains an important and efforts that direct developers to create join a GNU project to hack on code, still largely unfufilled part of this pro- free software for proprietary platforms. or who become associate members to cess. Second, in licensing, we publish show their support and fund our ef- We must find ways to remind our- the world’s most popular free soft- forts. Thank you! selves and others of the fact that mod- ware licenses, including the GNU Gen- ern phones are powerful computers eral Public License, and provide li- with powerful interfaces that are use- censing help and guidance to the free Life in the Licensing ful for an unimaginable variety of ar- software developer community through Compliance Lab bitrary applications. We must focus our Free Software Licensing and Com- on the fact that these computers have pliance Lab. At the Lab we collect by Brett Smith microphones, sensors, and other sen- copyrights from thousands of develop- Licensing Engineer sors and that we trust them with our ers working on the GNU operating sys- closest secrets and most sensitive data. 2 11 Microsoft in 2007 began claiming that Bilski case unfolds at news.swpat. tomers that they had the right to share the kernel violates 235 of its patents — org. and change some of the software they although the patents have never been received. That finally put an end to a specified. Neither could be precise, but case that had been open for more than they give us ballpark figures.