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, October 7th, 2016 meeting.

This week was the 'Meeting of the Undead' where we hunted down dead and broken links in the directory. Thanks to the efforts of Iankelling and adfeno, we have a script that runs to find dead external links on the directory and compile them into a list. One common problem we ran into was packages changing the location of their documentation without providing a redirect or updating their directory entry. So, if you are a maintainer out there who is itching to move documentation to a new location, keep in mind that you might be making your documentation harder to find.

We had lots of participants at this week's meeting cracking away at the hordes of undead, but as fmkb pointed out we couldn't get to everything and needed a good way to track entries where a new link couldn't be immediately found. We resolved to simply add notes at the top of the script generated list, but we'll have to revisit and work on a more nuanced solution in the future. Biotim, enrico, and jantwisted were some new faces to the meeting, and bill-auger returned to help mow down dead links.

We didn't end up deciding on a theme for this week during the meeting, but a suggestion afterwards came in that we work as the 'Skeleton GNU' and work on beefing up entries with limited information. While an entry can still be useful with only a short description and a few items of information, robust entries provide better documentation and make the directory an even better resource.

If you would like to help hunt and put meet on the bones of skeleton articles or just help update the directory in general, meet with us every Friday in #fsf on irc.freenode.org from 12pm to 3pm EDT (16:00 to 19:00 UTC).

Clear your calendars for the last weekend of March 2017! Registration for LibrePlanet is now open. The conference will be held March 25-26, 2017, in the Boston area.

Last year, over 350 people participated in LibrePlanet, traveling from 11 countries and 28 U.S. states. And guess what? Students and FSF members attend LibrePlanet gratis. Not a member? Join today to register gratis, or register at our non-member rate.

This year's theme is "The Roots of Freedom." Some talks at this year's conference will look back at the historical "roots" of the free software movement, including the Four Freedoms, the GNU General Public License and copyleft, and the focus on strong security and privacy protections. Others will look at the movement's strong, foundational "roots" -- and the exciting developments that grow from them in education, business, activism, and the arts.

Want to speak at LibrePlanet?

You have just a few weeks left to submit a session proposal -- the deadline is November 14th, 2016 at 18:59 EST (23:59 UTC).

Do you have questions about what makes a strong proposal? We're hosting an information session to answer any questions you have about submitting a proposal for LibrePlanet on Tuesday, November 1st from 15:00 - 18:00 EDT (19:00 - 22:00 UTC). Join us in the #libreplanet IRC channel on irc.freenode.net. Don't use IRC? Email your questions to campaigns@fsf.org.

Need help traveling to LibrePlanet?

We have a limited amount of funding to bring conference participants to LibrePlanet from all around the world. You can apply for a scholarship starting now -- the application deadline is Monday, December 1st, 2016 at 10:00 EST in the morning (15:00 UTC). Scholarship recipients will be notified in mid-December.

If you don't need a scholarship, you can help us welcome all types of people to LibrePlanet 2016 by making a contribution to the conference's scholarship fund now, or when you register for LibrePlanet.

Will your company sponsor LibrePlanet?

Would your employer consider sponsoring LibrePlanet? We'll be providing the info you need to persuade them soon, but you can also contact us now at campaigns@fsf.org for more information.

LibrePlanet is an energizing, friendly event where you'll meet activists, students, developers, and leaders -- and you may get involved in a new project, gain new energy for free software activism, and make new friends. We work hard to ensure a welcoming environment for all, and we have a safe space policy. Don't wait to register: we want you here with us on March 25-26, 2017 for LibrePlanet 2017.

Check out LibrePlanet 2016's video of testimonials about why the free software community loves this annual event!

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, September 30th, 2016 meeting.

This week we had a special theme of focusing on collaboration related software. This was another big category, but we made some great progress in updating tools for helping people work together. The channel also did some great collaboration in improving the tools we use to work on the directory. adfeno and dachary worked together on the participation guide tools section, improving guides for scripting work in the directory. They made a section in the guide for using pywikibot, a command line, to simplify tasks in the directory.

Iankelling and donaldr3 each started from opposite ends of the project management category and got close to meeting in the middle on updating the pages. jgay helped approve a massive batch of updates to the directory, and mattl was also there to help update entries and provide insight on some of the scripting tasks. The meeting ended up running long after its scheduled end time as everyone wanted to keep working on their projects.

adfeno and Iankelling worked long after the end of even the long-running meeting to put together a resource on broken links in the directory. Using pywikibot they were able to generate a listing of dead external links on the directory. Which means that our first meeting in October will be the 'Meeting of the Undead' where we focus on finding and bring back to life dead links.

If you would like to help hunt for the dead links or just help update the directory in general, meet with us every Friday in #fsf on irc.freenode.org from 12pm to 3pm EDT (16:00 to 19:00 UTC).

• apl-1.6a
• autoconf-archive-2016.09.16
• autogen-5.18.12
• bash-4.4
• denemo-2.0.12
• drgeo-16.10a
• emacs-25.1
• gawk-4.1.4
• global-6.5.5
• gnucash-2.6.14
• gnuchess-6.2.3
• gnu-c-manual-0.2.5
• gnutls-3.5.4
• gsl-2.2.1
• libmicrohttpd-0.9.51
• libosip2-5.0.0
• nano-2.7.0
• parallel-20160922
• readline-7.0
• texinfo-6.3
• unifont-9.0.02
• xorriso-1.4.6

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 Boris Bobrov as the new GNU MediaGoblin co-maintainer.

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.

The keynote addresses will be delivered by the FSF’s own Richard M. Stallman, former Chief Open Education Advisor Andrew Marcinek and founder of HacKIDemia Stefania Druga. At the event, there will be a special tribute to Dr. Seymour Papert (the father of educational computing) by Dr. Cynthia Solomon.

The event will have workshops and presentations given by over 20 speakers, with perspectives from the free software, maker education, open education communities and more. The event will challenge participants with the theme “From Play to Policy," leading to next steps for the community.

Here are the details:

http://www.librelearnlab.org

Saturday, October 8th and Sunday, October 9th

MIT Tang Center

Cost: $25, or Free (as in beer) for students. Registration is optional if only attending Dr. Richard Stallman’s talk, “Education for Freedom with Libre Software.” If you plan to attend the rest of the event, please register.