Sacha Chua

The FSF loves GNU emacs. Its extensibility and customizability are unparalleled. We also know that there's a need for high quality documentation at all levels, especially introductions for people coming from a variety of technical and nontechnical backgrounds.

That's where Sacha Chua comes in.

A self-professed "emacs geek," Sacha, in her own words, "really, really like[s] the Emacs text editor." She's written extensively on emacs, and has combined her love of art with her love of this GNU Project by creating these nifty hand-drawn guides on How to Learn Emacs and emacs keyboard shortcuts. Of course, these are available for use and reuse under a Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution license.

Sumana Harihareswara

It almost feels like cheating to talk about Sumana Harihareswara and all the work she has done for free software. Harihareswara will be delivering the closing keynote at LibrePlanet 2017 and I couldn't be happier to have the conference ending on such a note. She helped the volunteer and engineering communities of the Wikimedia Project reach new heights between 2011 and 2014, and has since become a stellar developer in her own right, contributing to a number of projects including GNU Mailman.

Shari Steele

After fifteen years as executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Shari Steele became the executive director of the Tor Project. The FSF has a lot of admiration for the Tor Project and the work they do. (The Library Freedom Project won the 2015 Free Software Award for Projects of Social Benefit for their outstanding work bringing Tor to libraries.)

Steele brings to Tor—a project using free software licenses—a skill set rarely talked about when we talk about contributors to free software projects. Directing a nonprofit, working with a board of directors, and managing the wide range of operations is a more than full-time job.

Jessica Tallon

Jessica Tallon became involved with GNU MediaGoblin as an Outreachy intern. Federation has been a major goal for GNU MediaGoblin for several years. In order to push their federation efforts further, the team offered an internship to Tallon and later hired her full time. Tallon joined the W3C Social Working Group, drafting recommendations for the standards that will define aspects of how the Web works. I know she's there representing the values of free software and working hard to make sure the future of the Web is free.

WOCInTechChat

One of my favorite projects that has come out in support of women in technology is #WOCINTECHCHAT, or Women of Color in Tech Chat. One of their efforts was to create this beautiful, high quality photo set. They took over 500 photos representing women of color in technical settings, around offices, and using some great pieces of free software. (Click through to see a photo of GPL project Audacity in action.) One of the great things about this photo set is their use of a free [Creative Commons 2.0 Attribution license][20].

More resources

It would be impossible to mention all the women who work hard for free software and serve as inspirations for people both in and outside of the community. We use GNU Social and twitter, so message us, because we'll have opportunities to highlight them and their work in the future!

In the past, the FSF has celebrated Ada Lovelace Day with posts on other great women in free software.

• Marina Zhurakhinskaya and Outreachy
• Lisa Maginnis
• Audrey Tang
• Karen Sandler

Every week free software activists from around the world come together in #fsf on irc.freenode.org to help improve the Free Software Directory. This recaps the work we accomplished at the Friday, March 3, 2017 meeting.

This week we returned to clearing the backlog of approved entries. During the meeting we were joined by a developer looking to discuss the licensing of their software developed under contract with an institution of higher learning. The issue of license compatibility came up and we talked about how GPLv2 or later can upgrade to GPLv3. All the while we plugged away at the backlog getting it to drop somewhat over the course of the meeting.

If you would like to help update the directory, meet with us every Friday in #fsf on irc.freenode.org from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m. EST (17:00 to 20:00 UTC).

Participate in supporting the FSD by adding new entries and updating existing ones. We will be 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 FSD 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.

While the FSD has been and continues to be a great resource to the world over the past decade, it has the potential of being a resource of even greater value. But it needs your help!

We are continuing our focus on adding new entries to the FSD. Over the last few weeks, we have chiseled away at the new entires waiting for approval. There are still quite a few programs looking to be added to the FSD. This Friday we will further whittle down the queue and expand the FSD.

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 FSD today! There are also weekly FSD Meetings pages that everyone is welcome to contribute to before, during, and after each meeting.

• ddrescue-1.22
• ed-1.14.2
• ggradebook-0.92
• glibc-2.25
• gnuhealth-3.0.6
• gnutls-3.5.9
• grep-3.0
• guile-2.0.14
• libiconv-1.15
• libsigsegv-2.11
• linux-libre-4.10-gnu
• nano-2.7.5
• octave-4.2.1
• parallel-20170222
• sed-4.4
• wget-1.19.1

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 Christopher Dimech as the maintainer of the new GNU package Behistun and Mathieu Lirzin as the new maintainer of Mcron and Automake.

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.

Gordon Hall will be joining us at LibrePlanet 2017, sharing his analysis of mass surveillance and how it connects to other issues. He spoke with us recently about himself, his interests, and why free software.

Would you tell us a bit about yourself?

I wanted to be a filmmaker when I was young. I managed to win a sizable scholarship to attend an arts college in Atlanta in my junior year of high school for two short films I wrote, directed, and edited with friends. I switched my major at the last minute to graphic design and lasted a semester before dropping out and helping some friends who were opening a skate park with graphics and their website. This was what ultimately got me into hacking. Some years later, I married my wife Libby and we had our daughter, Ruby who refuses to be in a car unless she can listen to hardcore.

How did you get interested in the relationship between surveillance and ecology?

Murray Bookchin's critical theory of Social Ecology has been very influential for me. The assertion that most ecological problems stem from social problems provides a wealth of relationships to explore. Given that mass surveillance is such a pressing social issue right now, I thought it would be interesting to connect the dots between it and the ongoing destruction of the environment.

Additionally, I have been working on the Storj project for over a year now, which aims to replace the "cloud" with a peer-to-peer encrypted object storage network capable of running on low-power and outdated hardware. Given that this project's primary qualities are securing data and promoting ecological sustainability by reducing electronic waste, it seemed like a good case study for ways we can tackle these problems.

What are you looking forward to at LibrePlanet?

This will be my second LibrePlanet, my first being last year. I don't enjoy attending technology conferences. Walking into a place that's promoted as a place to learn and then walking into a host of vendors trying to sell their proprietary software strikes me as a very hostile environment for learning. LibrePlanet, though, is something very special. It's something we all engage in together constructively, not the ruthless marketing machines I have attended in the past. Last year I left LibrePlanet feeling energized and motivated to keep hacking the planet and I expect the same this time around!

Do you have any skills or talents you wish more people knew about?

I play the ukulele and the cajón in a "band" with my wife and friends called Pukulele. We also have another "band" called Jellyfist in which I just yell obnoxiously.

Interested in learning more? Join us at LibrePlanet 2017 to attend Gordon's talk as well as dozens of others! As always, FSF members and students attend gratis.