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 on the Friday, December 2nd, 2016 meeting.

Last week's theme was new beginnings, and the newest beginning was deciding on a new start time for the meetings. A while back we had switched to a later time to see if it easier for more volunteers to show up. But a lot of us kept forgetting and showing up early any ways, and the later time didn't seem to have an effect on attracting other volunteers. So from here on out, our new beginning time is the old beginning time of 12 p.m. EST.

mangeurdenuage kept up the good work of attracting new volunteers, and brought in and helped train regagain on adding entries to the directory. goncalor and BruiserTom also got their start this week. David_Hedlund continued their work on the new tags, with johnsu01 directing the channel to documentation on using semantic properties instead of categories. Using semantic properties will make sure that the new tags are easily machine readable. Still more work needs to be done to set up these properties and having them display the correct information, but it was a good start.

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 19:00 UTC).

The GNU Press Shop is a key part of the Free Software Foundation's fundraising, and is essential to our outreach. As the go-to source for books and other reference materials for the happy hacker on your list, not to mention apparel, stickers, and other nifty objects to spread the message of software freedom, GNU Press can be a part of your holiday shopping as well. Members get a 20% discount – so if you're not one already, join today!

We've set an ambitious fundraising goal for 2016, and naturally need to back up that ambition with some great merchandise. This past autumn, the FSF asked the community to suggest new products they would like to see in the GNU Press Shop, and you provided. Through an editable document on libreplanet.org, free software supporters submitted all kinds of ideas, some of which we're excited to announce have become real products, available for purchase now!

In addition to these very cool new products, for a limited time we've packaged a few of our most popular items together to offer at a discount – save with three of a kind:

The FSF relies on individual supporters to sustain our work and the free software movement – that's why we have an online shop, and why we ask you to participate in product development. Help us reach our goal while spreading the message of free software by visiting the GNU Press Shop and having a look at these deluxe new offerings.

(Submissions for GNU Press merchandise are always open — visit the editable document and pitch your idea(s). We hope to bring more innovative, useful, and just-plain-cool items to market in 2017, and your input helps!)

As always, thank you for supporting the FSF!

• chess-6.2.4
• dico-2.4
• electric-9.07
• emms-4.2
• freeipmi-1.5.5
• gnudos-1.10
• ghostscript-9.14.1
• gnupg-2.1.16
• guile-ncurses-2.1
• gvpe-3.0
• kawa-2.2
• linux-libre-4.8.10-gnu
• mailutils-3.0
• octave-4.2.0
• parallel-20161122
• taler-0.2.0
• unifont-9.0.04

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 Mathieu Lirzin as the new maintainer of GNU Freetalk.

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.

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, dto 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!

This week's theme is new beginnings. With new volunteers joining us from last weeks meeting, and the fact that we haven't had a meeting focused on adding new entries to the directory, it's time to focus a bit on the new. We'll of course be discussing ongoing projects as well, but this week we want to make sure the directory keeps growing even as we do the work on the infrastructure needed to make it better.

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 FSD Meetings pages that everyone is welcome to contribute to before, during, and after each meeting.

GPG Sync is a recently launched project for managing the sharing of GPG keys, particularly within an organization. Micah Lee made the project internally at First Look Media and has now shared it with the world.

What inspired the creation of GPG Sync?

Since the very beginning of First Look Media we've taken computer security seriously, and that includes every single employee using encrypted email. But as an organization that has over 100 employees at this point, most of whom aren't already computer nerds, I quickly realized that managing keys is too complicated of a task for every single person to be required to do. I use GPG Sync to solve this problem: all of the complexity of key management can be managed by a small group of techies, allowing our growing user base to use encrypted email without having to think about the details nearly as often.

How will people use it?

At First Look Media, we've installed GPG Sync on everyone's workstations and just let it run in the background, ensuring that everyone will have everyone else's public keys without having to think about it. But I think a lot of other organizations will find it useful as well. I've spoken with people who work for other news organizations, as well as the non-profit world, who are excited about implementing it internally there. And I'm personally going to subscribe to multiple GPG Sync fingerprints lists, so I'll have trustworthy public keys available for a much larger group of people.

What features do you think really sets GPG Sync apart from similar software?

GPG Sync is really focused on the needs of organizations, while most other email encryption-related software is focused on the needs of individuals.

Why did you choose the GPLv3 as GPG Sync's license?

Whenever I decide I want to release some code, I like to default to GNU GPL so I can lock it open. I'm not opposed to using permissive licenses like BSD or MIT, but I only use them if I think there's a compelling reason for them.

How can users (technical or otherwise) help contribute to GPG Sync?

First, start using it! If you're part of an organization where everyone uses encrypted email -- even if it's just the other people in your Dungeons and Dragons party -- try setting up a fingerprints list and have everyone use it. See what you think, and report any bugs, or suggest features you'd like to see, in the issue tracker. And if you have programming skills, please take a look at the issue tracker and make some pull requests. I'm always happy to merge other people's code into the project.

What's the next big thing for GPG Sync?

I'm not sure yet, but probably I will focus on a port to other platforms.

Enjoy this interview? Check out our previous entry in this series, featuring Stefano Zacchiroli of Software Heritage.