Are you shopping for a student just getting their footing in the world of free software hacking, a friend determined to spread the good news of software freedom, or a longtime free software supporter who needs the newest piece of Free Software Foundation (FSF) gear? The GNU Press shop has you covered. Here are a few of our most exciting offerings for this holiday giving season.

• The GNU Scarf is brand new this year -- and just in time, if you are in the Northern hemisphere, for the chill winds of winter. It's long, warm, soft, and stylish, and features the iconic GNU mascot.

• The scarf is a perfect match for the newly-redesigned GNU Beanie -- in fact you can buy both together, and save money while staying toasty!

• Did you know that the GNU Press shop stocks autographed copies of Richard Stallman's books -- including the definitive document of the free software movement, Free Software, Free Society, presently in its third edition? It's informative and entertaining, and provides a great conversation starter for established believers looking to usher new free software supporters into the fold.

There's much more on offer at the GNU Press shop -- we have plenty of handy manuals and other reference materials, snazzy stickers, dozens of excellent t-shirts, and much more. We'll be hustling extra hard through the winter months to meet demand for cool FSF merch, and we hope to meet your needs with alacrity and panache. If you have any questions or special requests, please don't hesitate to email sales@fsf.org! Happy holidays!

By the way, the FSF's annual fundraiser is happening right now. Help us prepare for another year fighting for software freedom. Through December 8th, the Frâncu family will match all new membership donations, up to $10,000. We're about halfway to that goal, so there's still time to double your impact. Plus, all new and renewing annual FSF Associate Members ($120+) can choose to receive our new Four Freedoms t-shirt! So wear your freedom on your sleeve: become a member or make a donation today.

Verizon is a key participant in the effort to kill net neutrality: Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman Ajit Pai is a former Verizon lawyer, and the company has poured millions of dollars into lobbying and lawsuits. This Thursday, we're bringing the fight to their doorstep, joining hundreds of thousands of other defenders of the Internet by protesting at our nearest Verizon store, and we hope you'll join us.

WHEN: Thursday, December 7, 5pm

WHERE: Verizon – 745 Boylston Street, one block from Copley Square

If you want to protest with us, feel free to meet us at the Free Software Foundation's office at 51 Franklin Street in Downtown Crossing -- we will be heading over to the protest at 4:40pm. We encourage you to bring signs and warm clothes. Just remember that we're protesting Verizon executives and lobbyists, and the politicians who support them, not the store employees, so please treat them with respect.

In the meantime: make sure the FCC knows you care about saving net neutrality! You can see our guide to action here.

Help improve the Free Software Directory by adding new entries and updating existing ones. Every Friday we meet on IRC in the #fsf channel on irc.freenode.org.

Tens of thousands of people visit directory.fsf.org each month to discover free software. Each entry in the Directory contains a wealth of useful information, from basic category and descriptions, to providing detailed info about version control, IRC channels, documentation, and licensing info.

It was this week in 1991 that the leaders of Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine signed an agreement dissolving the Soviet Union and establishing the Commonwealth of Independent States. With this act, the monolithic Soviet/Communist/Eastern Bloc was torn asunder into its constituent parts. One of the weaknesses of the original bloc was that with such a centralized socio-economic structure, the arrangement of social institutions and structures, as well as physical ones, could produce cascading failures from this central node.

The solution? Federalization/decentralization. So the theme of the Directory meeting this week is just that. We will look at federalized/decentralized software, from social media like Mastodon to crypto-currency. There are many paths that the meeting can take this week!

If you are eager to help, and you can't wait or are simply unable to make it onto IRC on Friday, our participation guide will provide you with all the information you need to get started on helping the Directory today! There are also weekly Directory Meeting pages that everyone is welcome to contribute to before, during, and after each meeting.

(as of November 24, 2017):

• easejs-0.2.9
• emms-4.4
• gama-1.20
• gnuhealth-3.2.8
• gnupg-2.2.3
• hyperbole-7.0.2
• ignuit-2.24.3
• libcdio-1.0.0
• linux-libre-4.14.1-gnu
• mailutils-3.4
• nano-2.9.0
• nettle-3.4
• parallel-20171122
• sqltutor-1.0
• time-1.8
• units-2.16
• wget-1.19.2

For announcements of most new GNU releases, subscribe to the info-gnu mailing list: https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/info-gnu.

To download: nearly all GNU software is available from https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/, or preferably one of its mirrors from https://www.gnu.org/prep/ftp.html. You can use the URL https://ftpmirror.gnu.org/ to be automatically redirected to a (hopefully) nearby and up-to-date mirror.

This month, we welcome Bertrand Garrigues as a maintainer of GNU Groff.

A number of GNU packages, as well as the GNU operating system as a whole, are looking for maintainers and other assistance: please see https://www.gnu.org/server/takeaction.html#unmaint if you'd like to help. The general page on how to help GNU is at https://www.gnu.org/help/help.html.

If you have a working or partly working program that you'd like to offer to the GNU project as a GNU package, see https://www.gnu.org/help/evaluation.html.

As always, please feel free to write to us at maintainers@gnu.org with any GNUish questions or suggestions for future installments.

On September 30th, 2015, the Free Software Foundation and the Software Freedom Conservancy jointly published the Principles of Community-Oriented GPL Enforcement (the Principles). The ultimate goal of free software license enforcement isn't to punish violators or force them to stop distribution, but rather to ensure that free software always remains free. It incentivizes proper redistribution of free software, seeking to increase the number of companies, individuals, and organizations involved. The Principles lay out the policies anyone can follow to achieve these goals in an ethical manner. The Netfilter project formally adopted the Principles in July of 2016, and we expect more projects and organizations will follow.

Now, in a positive step forward, a group of companies led by Red Hat has announced a commitment in effect adopting an important part of the Principles: They will use the GPLv3's more refined approach to compliance and termination when dealing with violations on their GPLv2-licensed works. In addition to Red Hat, the companies making the "Common Cure Rights Commitment" include Facebook, Google, and IBM. This commitment is similar to the announcement made by developers of the kernel Linux this past October.

We explain why this is important in the Principles:

GPLv2 terminates all copyright permissions at the moment of violation, and that termination is permanent. GPLv3's termination provision allows first-time violators automatic restoration of distribution rights when they correct the violation promptly, and gives the violator a precise list of copyright holders whose forgiveness it needs. GPLv3's collaborative spirit regarding termination reflects a commitment to and hope for future cooperation and collaboration. It's a good idea to follow this approach in compliance situations stemming from honest mistakes, even when the violations are on works under GPLv2.

That is why the Free Software Foundation extends the benefit of GPLv3-style termination even for GPLv2-only works, while we also remind that this is only one of the reasons GPLv2 projects should consider upgrading to GPLv3.

The announcement of the Common Cure Rights Commitment is welcome news for the free software movement, and we look forward to more organizations either fully adopting the Principles of Community-Oriented GPL Enforcement or making similar commitments in the same spirit. These steps help to strengthen copyleft and therefore the long-term protection of user freedom.

Everyone is welcome to join the Principles mailing list to discuss their application and improvement.