Hi there, I'm Amin Bandali, often just bandali on the interwebs. I wear a few different hats around GNU as a maintainer, Web master, and Savannah hacker, and I'm very excited to be extending that to the Free Software Foundation (FSF) as an intern with the FSF tech team for spring 2020.

Growing up around parents with backgrounds in computer engineering and programming, it did not take long for me to find an interest in tinkering and playing with computers as a kid, and I first came into contact with GNU/Linux in my teenage years. My first introduction to the world of free software came a few years later, when a friend kindly pointed out to me that what I had vaguely known and referred to as "open source" software is more properly referred to as free software, and helped me see why "open source" misses the point of free software. After learning about and absorbing the ideas and ideals of free software, I have since become a free software activist. As a computer scientist who enjoys studying and hacking on various programs and sometimes writing my own, I have made a point of releasing all I can under strong copyleft licenses, particularly the GNU AGPL license.

My involvement with the GNU Project started in 2016, first as a volunteer Web master, and later as one of the maintainers of GNUzilla and IceCat late last year. Also around the same time, I led a group of volunteers in organizing and holding EmacsConf 2019 as a completely online conference, using only free software tools, much like the excellent LibrePlanet 2020. I love GNU Emacs, and use it more than any other program. GNU Emacs helps me do a wide variety of tasks such as programming, reading and composing emails, and chatting via IRC.

More closely related to my internship with the FSF tech team, I have been familiarizing myself with various pieces of the GNU Savannah infrastructure with help from veteran Savannah hacker Bob Proulx, gradually learning and picking up tasks helping with the administration and maintenance of Savannah. I am also a member of the Systems Committee of my university's computer science club, overseeing and maintaining a large fleet of GNU/Linux servers for our club members.

For my internship with the Free Software Foundation, I will be working with the FSF tech team on a number of tasks, including helping with the free software forge project, as well as various improvements for gnu.org. I look forward to learning many new things and picking up valuable skills through my internship with the FSF's exceptional tech team, who do so much for the GNU project and the wider free software community.

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is now offering all FSF associate members free "as in freedom" videoconferencing as an additional member benefit. Becoming a member now helps you push back against increased societal pressure to use nonfree software to communicate with coworkers, friends, and loved ones during the COVID-19 pandemic, and after.

Information about how to use the FSF videoconferencing instance for associate members

We have been raising the alarm about encroachments upon user freedom by popular remote communication tools since social distancing guidelines were issued. You might have seen our recent publications warning users about widely used nonfree applications for remote communication and education, like Zoom.

As promised at LibrePlanet 2020, we have formed a working group to document and address major issues facing free software communication platforms, and this project is part of that effort. Another initiative in our free communication toolbox is a collaborative resource page created to steer users to applications that respect them, and away from conferencing tools like Zoom, which requires users to give up their software-related freedoms, and which has been a recent focal point of criticism due to problems ranging from security issues to privacy violations.

The platform we use to offer ethical videoconferencing access is Jitsi Meet. We used it previously to stream and record our annual LibrePlanet conference for an online audience after the COVID-19 pandemic forced us to cancel the in-person event. Choosing Jitsi Meet is only the first step to addressing the problems posed to user freedom by services like Zoom and Facebook. Even users that start a call via a server running Jitsi could still be vulnerable if that server depends on or shares information with third parties. The FSF made changes to the code we are running, in order to enhance privacy and software freedom, and published the source code, to motivate others to host their own instances. The FSF instance does not use any third party servers for network initialization, and does not recommend or link to any potentially problematic services.

In order to be able to provide a sustainable and reliable service, we are offering the ability to create conversations on the server exclusively to associate members, and it is only intended for personal, noncommercial use. Members can create a channel using their member credentials, but then any person or group can participate in the conversation. Nonmembers can be invited, but cannot start a channel.

Privacy and encryption in the FSF Jitsi Meet instance

Jitsi Meet offers end-to-end encryption for conversations between two people. For conversations between three or more people, there will always be encryption at the network level, but you still have to place some level of trust in the server operators that process your video stream. Because the FSF controls the physical machine, we can offer members the respect of privacy and freedom you have come to expect from us. The FSF servers do not store any voice, video, or messages from calls, and logging is minimal -- for the purpose of troubleshooting and abuse prevention only. Jitsi is working on developing end-to-end encryption for calls with more than two people, and we will implement these changes on our instance as soon as this becomes available.

As a nonprofit, the FSF has limited resources, which may at times affect the server capacity. We will experiment with different parameters and limitations and improve the instance as needed, and update the repo accordingly.

Support our work

Now that remote and digital connections are playing a bigger role in our daily lives than ever before, it is important to communicate about and push for free software continuously. Our success hinges on the people that support us, and in return, we want to do our part to make sure no one is forced to give up their freedom in order to live their (now remote) daily lives with technology. Please consider an FSF associate membership to help support our work, and continue your advocacy for free software.

Illustration Copyright © 2020, Free Software Foundation, Inc., by Zoë Kooyman, Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.

• bison-3.6.2
• denemo-2.4.0
• emms-5.4
• freeipmi-1.6.5
• gcc-10.1.0
• gdb-9.2
• gnuastro-0.12
• gnuhealth-3.6.4
• mediagoblin-0.10.0
• nano-4.9.3
• nettle-3.6
• parallel-20200522

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.

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.

As you may already know, every associate member is incredibly valuable to the Free Software Foundation (FSF). Since most of our funding comes from individual donations and memberships, associate members aren’t just a number. Each new membership magnifies our reach and our ability to effect social change, by demonstrating your commitment to the crucial cause of software freedom.

Right now, FSF associate members have the opportunity to reap some fantastic rewards by participating in our virtual LibrePlanet membership drive. We still have the raffle prizes generously donated by Technoethical, Vikings, JMP.chat, and ThinkPenguin for this year’s LibrePlanet conference, which we held entirely online this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, we’re giving them away to those who go the extra mile to help us grow by referring new annual associate members to sign up!

Associate members receive a range of benefits for their contribution, like an FSF email alias, access to the member forum, 20% discount in the FSF shop, and gratis entrance to the annual LibrePlanet conference. In fact, we've been working hard to add an exciting new member benefit this month as well -- stay tuned!

Winning the prizes is easy: just find a friend, acquaintance, colleague, or family member who uses free software, knows about free software, or is just worried about how corporate abuses of computer users by proprietary software are ramping up right now, and tell them why they need to support the FSF today.

In order for you to qualify to win a prize, new members have to sign up using your referral link. You will find your personal referrer link on the dashboard after logging in at https://my.fsf.org/.

To see the prize list, and find out how many referrers you need for each prize, check out our original announcement of the raffle at https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/virtual-libreplanet-raffle-encourage-others-to-join-fsf-and-win-prizes.

It shouldn’t be difficult to understand or explain why our work is so crucial today, and why the fight to free our software deserves everyone’s support. We hope you’ll agree with John Hamelink, who told us he became an associate member this month because "We've never needed the Free Software Foundation more than right now."

Often, a proprietary software company's silence can speak as loudly as their latest campaign against a computer user's right to freedom. This is the case with Microsoft's developer-centric "Build" event. While Microsoft announced a few more welcome additions to its free software output, it missed the opportunity to demonstrate a real commitment to user freedom by upcycling its recently abandoned Windows 7 operating system under a free software license.

The predictable failure here here fits together well with the corporation's complex history of mixed messaging on freedom, which once compared copyleft to "a virus that gobbles up intellectual property like a Pac-Man," and yet now would have you believe that it "loves [free software]." Our Upcycle Windows 7 petition has given Microsoft the perfect opportunity to take the next step in its promotion of free software, to show that its "love" was real. We are disappointed, but not surprised, that they have ignored this call from us and thousands of potential users.

Although the petition signatures and "special gift" were signed, sealed, and delivered safely to their Redmond, WA headquarters, the FSF has not received any response from a Microsoft representative. Of course, the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the operations of even the largest companies, but as of yet, we haven't heard anything from Microsoft suggesting this was the reason for the lack of response. They certainly seem to have had the resources to put on a 48-hour video marathon about proprietary software.

We can only take this to mean that it's "business as usual" as far as the corporation is concerned, but things don't have to remain that way. And while Microsoft has failed to live up to its own words, we (and all of our petition signers) aren't just shouting into the void. 13,635 free software supporters from around the globe signed the petition, and the initiative saw more than 6,000 newcomers subscribe to the monthly Free Software Supporter newsletter.

Of course, this small setback is just another bump in the road in our fight for a world in which people can use their computers to work, hack, and play in complete freedom. In this vein, we encourage everyone Microsoft has left in the lurch to give a fully free operating system a try. Your friends, colleagues, and loved ones might be surprised by how free software's elegance and ease-of-use continues to improve each day, and you might get your first glimpse of living in participating in a collaborative digital community: one in which your contributions, whether they're in the form of code, translations, graphic design, or bug reports, can benefit the experience of users everywhere. And unlike a certain operating system from Redmond, we can assure you that GNU/Linux isn't going anywhere anytime soon. After all, it powers the Internet!

There's still time for Microsoft to step up and show its respect for user freedom, and if they do, we're ready to give them all the assistance that they need. We'll continue to welcome the contributions Microsoft has been making to various free software programs. It's not that we don't appreciate those. Rather, it's that they still exist in a context where the company appears to be trying to get the best of both worlds -- proprietary and free -- and they just passed up a huge opportunity to show their commitment by ending the waffling. But if they still choose not to, we and every other free software activist can take consolation in the fact that to deny users freedom is to be on the wrong side of history.