Today's Friday Free Software Directory IRC Meeting was energetic and productive -- as IRC newcomer noted: "what is this all about? I feel excited!". And, for good reason: this summer has been an exciting and productive one on the Directory. One of the big reasons for this success is due to contributions of Morten "Jobbe" Jakobsen, who has been helping to run our IRC meetings, as well as to make sure that the many contributions and submissions from other volunteers are handled in a timely manner. Jobbe and the other volunteers and contributors continue to increase as do the number of new entries and updates.

Four of the entries we published today were:

• Privacy Badger: Browser extension that detects and prevents third-party tracking (License: GPLv3+)
• Silicon Empire: Program to Burn CDs, DVDs and Blu-rays (License: GPLv3)
• Motif: Distribution for the Motif user interface component toolkit (License: LGPLv2+)
• mu: Maildir indexer/searcher + GNU Emacs mail client + Guile bindings (License: GPLv3+)

In addition to publishing and updating entries, we also made some cosmetic improvements to our link icons and templates.

We hope you can join Jobbe and the rest of us, too, next week! You can find out how to attend our Friday Free Software Directory IRC Meetings by checking our blog or subscribing to the RSS feed.

FSF campaigns manager Zak Rogoff (left) with René Pérez of the New Economy Coalition.

Last month, FSF campaigns manager Zak Rogoff attended CommonBound, a Boston conference for those working towards a more equitable and sustainable economy.

Zak joined René Pérez of the New Economy Coalition on the panel "Opening access to the digital means of production: free software for a more equitable economy." The panel featured an exploration of existing and proposed free software business models, as well as a discussion with participants of varying free software experience, from seasoned hackers to economic justice activists discovering the four freedoms for the first time.

No matter where you are on the political spectrum, free software is important to achieve political autonomy. The FSF is happy to be building bridges to new communities, and exploring the role of free software in social justice and economic change. We look forward to sharing skills and ideas with diverse allies as we continue to foster an inclusive free software community.

If you're interested in a conference experience focused on free software, check out LibrePlanet, the FSF's weekend-long event next spring, and sign up for updates on LibrePlanet 2015.

We'd also be glad to speak at your event if we can make the trip. Send us an email at campaigns@fsf.org to get the conversation started. We also encourage supporters to give talks and host events in their communities. Check out our resources area if you'd like to get started with free software outreach.

• coreutils-8.23
• cssc-1.4.0
• datamash-1.0.5
• denemo-1.1.6
• emms-4.0
• gcc-4.9.1
• gettext-0.19.2
• gforth-0.7.3
• gnudos-1.3
• gnuhealth-2.6.1
• gnupg-1.4.18
• gnupg-2.0.25
• gsrc-2014.07.06
• nano-2.3.6
• parallel-20140722
• ucommon-6.1.9
• unifont-7.0.03
• xorriso-1.3.8

To get announcements of most new GNU releases, subscribe to the info-gnu mailing list: https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/info-gnu. Nearly all GNU software is available from https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/, or preferably one of its mirrors (https://www.gnu.org/prep/ftp.html). You can use the url http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/ to be automatically redirected to a (hopefully) nearby and up-to-date mirror.

This month, we welcome Mose Giordano as a new co-maintainer of AUC-TeX, James Cloos as a new co-maintainer of a2ps (following his work on GNU enscript and trueprint), and Assaf Gordon as the author and maintainer of the new package datamash. Thanks to all.

Also, please consider attending the GNU Hackers' Meeting https://www.gnu.org/ghm/, in Munich this year, August 15-17; attendance is gratis, but pre-registration is essential (and needs to be done immediately).

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. To submit new packages to the GNU operating system, see https://www.gnu.org/help/evaluation.html.

As always, please feel free to write to me, karl@gnu.org, with any GNUish questions or suggestions for future installments.

When the FSF launched our guide to personal email encryption last month, it was enthusiastically received by English-speakers looking for an easy way to get started fighting bulk surveillance. Our community then came together to translate it and bring it to speakers of six more languages. Today we're launching the second round of translations: Spanish, Romanian, Italian, and Greek.

This guide started as an effort of the FSF and some skilled graphic and Web designers, but it's become a worldwide effort by free software activists translating in more than ten countries. This kind of teamwork is what our movement is all about, and the FSF is thrilled to facilitate it.

The Free Software Foundation provides the infrastructure and professional management for our community of translators, and rigorously researches and refines the material in Email Self-Defense. We also maintain Edward, the multilingual encryption reply bot program. We've spent a lot of time and energy on this guide so far, and we want to spend more, but we need resources.

Can you donate to help us recoup some of the cost we've put into creating this guide and fostering a community around it?

Your donation will also enable us to make technical infrastructure improvements to EmailSelfDefense.fsf.org to make it easy to translate into more languages, and hopefully let us add a set of instructions for using encryption on mobile devices.

Our goal is to make email encryption approachable for people speaking any language and using any device, while also using the guide to deliver a clear message about the importance of free software.

If you'd like to create a version for a language that we haven't published yet, or help maintain one of the existing translations, please send an email to campaigns@fsf.org telling us about your experiences with translating.

We're also looking for people to join the GNU.org translation team and create translated versions of Richard Stallman's article "How Much Surveillance Can Democracy Withstand?" The article makes the point that, to fight bulk surveillance, we need to reduce the amount of data that is collected about our lives in general (both by government and private entities).

Thank you for being such a supportive community, and coming forward to help us with this project. We're happy to be making it easier for you to protect your privacy and put up a defense against surveillance.

Please email us at donate@fsf.org if you'd like to donate in Euros.

Languages: English, română, español

Join the FSF and friends on Friday, August 1, from 2pm to 5pm EDT (18:00 to 21:00 UTC) to help improve the Free Software Directory by adding new entries and updating existing ones. We will be on IRC in the #fsf channel on freenode.

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.

While the Free Software Directory 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!

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!