Tor is a publicly accessible, free software-based system for anonymizing Internet traffic. It relies on thousands of computers around the world called relays, which route traffic in tricky ways to dodge spying. The more relays, the stronger and faster the network.

We'd like to warmly thank our allies at the Electronic Frontier Foundation for organizing the Tor Challenge and inviting us to join them in promoting it. And most of all, thanks to the 1,635 of you who started a relay! (The FSF would have started one too, but we've already been running ours for a while.)

The Tor Challenge has already been successful, but that doesn't mean it's too late to start a Tor relay! You can get started from the Challenge's beautifully-designed Web site.

To see stats and graphs about the Tor Challenge, read the EFF's post.

To learn about more tools and actions you can take to secure privacy for yourself and your community, see the FSF's bulk surveillance page. For a discussion of pushing back bulk surveillance on a mass scale, read Richard Stallman's article "How Much Surveillance Can Democracy Withstand?".

This Saturday, September 20th, people everywhere are getting together to celebrate free software. Install parties, encryption workshops, hackathons, you name it. Here in Massachusetts, FSF Web developer David Thompson is running a getting-started workshop for F-Droid, the free software app repository for devices running Android-based operating systems like Replicant.

Wondering what to do for Software Freedom Day? Take a page out of Dave's book and share your favorite free software application with a friend. What better way to celebrate than exercising freedom 2 of free software's four freedoms with your community? If you're on GNU Social or Pump.io or even Twitter, tell us (@FSF) which application you're sharing with the hashtag #SFD (see our thoughts about Twitter).

This is the eleventh year of Software Freedom Day, and people are holding events in almost 100 countries. Thanks, everyone involved for reminding us how active, creative and inspiring the free software movement is. However you choose to celebrate, have a great Software Freedom Day!

Image CC BY 3.0 Unported Software Freedom Day.

Our Call for Sessions is open now, and you can also apply to volunteer or exhibit at LibrePlanet 2015. General registration will open in October.

You've got until Sunday, November 2nd, 2014 at 19:59 EST (23:59 UTC) to submit your proposals. We can't wait to see what you come up with!

This year, the theme of LibrePlanet is "Free Software Everywhere." We're looking for talks that touch on the many places and ways that free software is used around the world, as well as ways to make free software ubiquitous. Think "everywhere" in the broadest sense of the word--it's not just geography-based talks we're after. What are some contexts where free software is thriving, and some others where it needs a push? How have you worked to advance free software in your company or community? And what about free software on all of the myriad pieces of hardware we use, including laptops, phones, tablets, and even coffee makers? At LibrePlanet 2015, we're taking software freedom around the world, to outer space, and considering its role in industry, government, academia, community organizing, and personal computing.

Should I submit a session proposal for LibrePlanet?

Yes! We encourage speakers of all experience levels to submit a proposal. LibrePlanet is a great place for new and seasoned speakers alike. While LibrePlanet always includes technical talks, our program also emphasizes non-technical topics and topics that are appropriate for newcomers. We are especially interested to see proposals from people who use free software or apply its values for social benefit, from academic research to community organizing, education to medicine and the arts. LibrePlanet is committed to increasing the participation of speakers belonging to groups traditionally underrepresented at free software conferences, including women and people of color.

Some ideas for sessions

• Sharing a story of how free software has been applied for social benefit
• Tackling a threat or organizing challenge facing the free software movement
• Demonstrating a new and exciting piece of software or development within an existing software project
• Engaging youth, the future of the free software movement. We're looking for proposals for all age groups, from young children, to high school age, to college students
• Thinking critically about challenges and opportunities facing the movement, and charting a path to victory
• Bringing a key part of free software history to life
• Giving newcomers a way to learn about free software principles and philosophy, and/or giving newcomers a way to start using free software in their daily lives

At LibrePlanet, we are looking for sessions that embrace the free software movement's ideals and also its language. For example, using "free software" is better than using "open source."

Volunteer for LibrePlanet

LibrePlanet depends on volunteer support during the planning process all the way through the event. We're looking for volunteers who want to help us with the planning and preparation work for LibrePlanet. Learn more about volunteering and sign up at LibrePlanet.org.

Promotional opportunities at LibrePlanet

LibrePlanet is the perfect place to spread the word about your organization to an inspired and engaged audience. We have two kinds of promotional opportunities for LibrePlanet 2015: exhibit tables and sponsorships. Exhibit tables will be located in a highly visible primary thoroughfare. Your table and program acknowledgement will reach hundreds of software developers, free software activists, academics, students, and computer users. You can apply for an exhibit table at LibrePlanet.org. Exhibitors will be accepted on a rolling basis until the hall fills, so apply early!

What makes LibrePlanet so special is the amazing contributions from our speakers, exhibitors, and volunteers. We can't wait to hear your ideas!

We recently updated our list of various licenses and comments about them to include the IPA Font license. It is a copyleft free software license for fonts, incompatible with the GPL. The IPA Font is one of the few freely licensed high quality TrueType fonts available for Japanese characters, so verifying that the license is actually free is an important step for Japanese hackers. That success does come with one caveat: the IPA Font license has a somewhat burdensome requirement regarding the use of the name of the font. The license requires that derivative works not use or include the name of the original work as a program name, font name or file name. Since fonts can be easily aliased with free software tools, this isn't too big of an issue, more of an annoyance. Despite this flaw, fonts distributed under the terms of the IPA font license carry freedom to users, and so it deserves a spot on our license list.

Today's Friday Free Software Directory (FSD) IRC Meeting was focused on GNU packages. In particular, user mtmj updated dozens of GNU packages to make sure that the package identifier used on gnu.org matches the one we use on directory.fsf.org. This is exciting because it brings us one step closer to having a seamless integration between the Free Software Directory and the GNU project (at least in terms of formatting URLs!). The next (super secret project) I want to begin working on is an importer that pulls info from GNU Guix directly into the FSD.

In addition to updating GNU packages and brainstorming some new functionality for the FSD, I want to highlight a new contribution from our newest contributor, c107:

• Canvas: a feature-rich learning management system. It is licensed under GNU AGPL version 3 (or at your option, any later version).

I believe we have averaged at least one new contributor per week this entire summer! Let's keep this streak going. You, too, can join in on the fun. Find out how to attend our Friday Free Software Directory IRC Meetings by checking our blog or subscribing to the RSS feed.