The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is excited to share that we'll be participating in Outreachy, a paid internship program to help those who are underrepresented in tech start contributing to free software projects.

In past years, the FSF has helped GNU projects participate in Outreachy by providing financial sponsorship for interns. This is the first year that we'll be working with an intern to help them to explore even more ways people can contribute to the fight for user freedom.

Outreachy is important to us for a number of reasons:

• We've made growing the community a priority. The High Priority Projects list calls on the free software community to "encourage contribution by people underrepresented in the community." This is one of the ways we can help contribute to that goal.

• Representation matters to us. Better representation in free software is something personally important to the staff of the FSF -- nearly half of us (and the entire campaigns team) are women, our deputy director is Asian American, and we've all had the experience of finding our place in the free software community.

• Strong communities make strong movements. Most importantly, we know that a variety of experiences and viewpoints -- which comes from having a broad range of activists, contributors, enthusiasts, and users -- creates a strong, robust community that will have the power needed to help user freedom triumph in a world where the status quo is proprietary.

We have three possible projects for interns. We're looking to work with someone to update the Email Self-Defense Guide (ESD). There are a wide range of ways to get involved, including design, illustration, and writing. On the more technical side, there are projects on working on Trisquel GNU/Linux and the Free Software Directory, building MediaWiki skills, responsive theming, licensing and privacy, and documentation.

Interested in being an Outreachy participant with the FSF? Please read our community page!

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 that has been carefully checked by FSF staff and trained volunteers.

When a user comes to the Directory, they know that everything in it is free software, has only free dependencies, and runs on a free OS. With over 16,000 entries, it is a massive repository of information about free software.

While the Directory has been and continues to be a great resource to the world for many years now, it has the potential to be a resource of even greater value. But it needs your help! And since it's a MediaWiki instance, it's easy for anyone to edit and contribute to the Directory.

Last week we were working on updating entries with cryptocurrency donation information, and we'll have to come back to that theme again soon. But this week we're back to a classic: adding new entries to the Directory. A new project leader has taken on the Directory import project, and we hope to discuss that work and get it rolling, but we also want to keep adding all the free software we love that isn't on the Directory already.

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.

• bash-4.4.18
• binutils-2.30
• ddrescue-1.23
• dico-2.5
• freeipmi-1.6.1
• gcc-7.3.0
• gcide-0.52
• gdb-8.1
• glibc-2.27
• global-6.6.2
• glpk-4.65
• gnupg-2.2.5
• gnurl-7.58.0
• gnutls-3.6.2
• less-530
• libffcall-2.1
• libmicrohttpd-0.9.59
• linux-libre-4.15.5-gnu
• mpfr-4.0.1
• nano-2.9.3
• ncurses-6.1
• parallel-20180222
• patch-2.7.6
• pycdio-2.0.0
• tack-1.08

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 Nathon Nichols as maintainer of GNU LibreJS, and Roel Jansen and Ricardo Wurmus as maintainers of the new GNU GWL.

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.

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 that has been carefully checked by FSF staff and trained volunteers.

When a user comes to the Directory, they know that everything in it is free software, has only free dependencies, and runs on a free OS. With over 16,000 entries, it is a massive repository of information about free software.

While the Directory has been and continues to be a great resource to the world for many years now, it has the potential to be a resource of even greater value. But it needs your help! And since it's a MediaWiki instance, it's easy for anyone to edit and contribute to the Directory.

Last month, the FSF was extremely fortunate to receive a massive $1 million bitcoin donation from the Pineapple Fund. This incredible generosity will power so much good work for the free software community. Cryptocurrency enthusiasts have supported our work for years, and now we want to help make it easy for them to support individual projects as well. We recently added a property to the Directory that lets users indicate that a project accepts cryptocurrency donations. We hope that this new feature will make it easy for donors to find projects that can accept such donations. But in order to do that, we need to start tagging our favorite crypto-accepting projects in the Directory. This week's meeting will focus on starting that project and hopefully designating a team leader to keep it running strong.

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.

Every day, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) works to support free software projects, licenses, and activism around the world. We know you trust us in these efforts, and because we deeply value transparency and accountability, we are publishing our latest Annual Report, which covers the 2016 fiscal year (FY) of October 1, 2015 through September 30, 2016. The report is the result of a full external financial audit, along with a focused study of program results. It offers a look at the Foundation's activities, accomplishments, and financial picture. You will also read about the impact of our programs and FY2016's major events. A high resolution version of the Annual Report is available too.

You can support the FSF's fight for user freedom by:

• becoming an Associate Member;
• making a one-time donation; and/or
• sharing this report on social media, and with your friends and colleagues who may want to support user freedom by becoming a member.

This report is a snapshot of the FSF's work, and we hope you will continue to stand with us as we face new threats to user freedom. Please send any questions or comments regarding the report to campaigns@fsf.org.