[Ossm-members] Fwd: [FSF] Free Software Supporter -- Issue 14, May 2009

Thu May 14 11:25:06 UTC 2009

# Free Software Supporter
Issue 14, May 2009

Welcome to the Free Software Supporter, the Free Software Foundation's
monthly news digest and action update -- being read by you and 19189
other activists.

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>
 * Widget: <http://www.fsf.org/associate/widget>

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

Multilingual? Send translations of the Supporter to <campaigns at fsf.org>.

* FSF launches new free software activist internship program
* ESP launches a wiki for Anti Software Patent Campaigns
* Impeach Bezos for Amazon's Kindle Swindle
* The War on Sharing: Why the FSF Cares About RIAA Lawsuits
* GNU spotlight with Karl Berry
* Richard Stallman's speaking schedule and other FSF events
* Take action with the FSF!

## FSF launches new free software activist internship program

*The deadline for applications for the summer term is Monday, May 25.*

The FSF has announced a new internship program for free software
activists, inviting students to apply for its first round of openings
by Monday, May 25th.

The program provides opportunities for participants to work closely
with FSF staff members for twelve-week terms in core areas of the
FSF's work, including campaign and community organizing, free software
licensing, systems and network administration, GNU project support,
and web development.

 * <http://www.fsf.org/news/new-internship-program>

## ESP launches a wiki for anti software patent campaigns.

End Software Patents today launched http://en.swpat.org, a wiki to
document the case against software patents. Over 100 articles have
already been started to give an idea of the scope and structure of the
wiki.

ESP's executive director Ciaran O'Riordan explains: "So far, we have
articles about the case law, legislation, and patent office behavior
in various countries. We have articles about economic studies, about
related books, about the various ways to fight software patents, about
each of the arguments against software patents, and most importantly,
the evidence for each argument."

 * <http://www.fsf.org/news/endsoftwarepatents-launches-swpat>

## Impeach Bezos for Amazon's Kindle Swindle

Ian's story of being banned from Amazon for returning too many things
reminded us of a Seinfeld episode, where Kramer gets banned from Joe's
Fruit Market -- the best fruit market in town -- when he tries to
return a sub par peach...

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has said in the past, "Our vision is every book,
ever printed, in any language, all available in less than 60 seconds"
-- but like a fortune cookie, to understand what he really means here
you need to add "exclusively controlled by us" to the end of the
quote.

 * <http://defectivebydesign.org/impeach-jeff-bezos-for-kindle-swindle>

## The War on Sharing: Why the FSF Cares About RIAA Lawsuits

In one of RIAA’s high profile cases the Free Software Foundation
backed defendant Joel Tenenbaum, much to the dislike of the music
industry lobby. John Sullivan, Operations Manager at the FSF explains
in a guest post why they think these cases impact not just music, but
also free software and its technology.

 * <http://ur1.ca/49tj>

## GNU Spotlight with Karl Berry

coreutils-7.3  CSSC-1.2.0       findutils-4.4.1   freeipmi-0.7.8
gcc-4.4.0      glpk-4.38        gmp-4.3.0         gnu-c-manual-0.2
libtasn1-2.1   libunistring-0.9 psychosynth-0.1.5 sed-4.2
sipwitch-0.5.4 solfege-3.14.3   sqltutor-0.6      swbis-1.3
ucommon-2.0.5  zile-2.3.7

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 its 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 (<http://lists.gnu.org/pipermail/info-gnu>).

I'd like to give a warm welcome to Tim Musson, author and maintainer of
the new GNU packages gxmessage and ignuit.

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, <karl at gnu.org>, with any
GNUish questions or suggestions for future installments.

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

* May 13 | TBC -- Miraflores de la Sierra, Madrid, Spain

* Jun 05 | Trophées du Libre 2009

* Jun 06 | Copyleft and the War on Sharing -- Danbury, CT

* Jun 12 | Software Libre en la Ética y en the Práctica -- Quito, Ecuador

* Jun 15 | El Movimiento del Software Libre -- Sangolquí, Ecuador

 * <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=6023>

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.

-- 
http://blog.gemidjy.me || http://wiki.lugola.net
Member of Lugola, 2s.mk, FSF (no.6023), IFSA
GnuPG: 754AC43D,

I'm an FSF member -- Help us support software freedom!
http://www.fsf.org/jf?referrer=6023

macedonian free software and hacking ezine:
 [Lugarchy: http://ezine.lugola.net]