In the first week of January, we closed the Free Software Foundation's end of the year fundraiser and associate membership drive, and we'd like to thank you for your generosity and support. Because of you, we've raised $441,802 and had 488 new associate members join -- surpassing our goal of 400 new members. Thank you for donating, joining, and spreading the word.

Your support is just what we need to push the free software movement to new frontiers. Our ever-growing base of members, donors, and activists are the backbone of our work and free software. Without you, we wouldn't have been able to raise over $440,000 for software freedom. With the 488 new members, we now have more than 5,000 active FSF members. Thanks to you, we'll be able to expand the staff of the FSF, increasing our organizational capacity, ability to work on issues that matter, and build the community; certify more Respects Your Freedom products to ensure that your devices run free software out of the box, and continue enforcing the GNU General Public License and leading other copyleft efforts; build our technical infrastructure and provide greater support for the many projects that rely on the FSF; create new items for our catalog of cool new swag and engaging publications from the GNU Press Shop; ramp up the fight against DRM; and create a better future for free software.

We're excited to see what 2019 brings, which is only possible because of you. Thank you.

The donation from the Pineapple Fund arrived in the form of Bitcoin and had gone down to around $860,000 by the time we could convert it all to dollars. Around half of the donation from Handshake is earmarked for specific software projects; some of that will go to improving Replicant, the free Android fork, but that half won't help fund the FSF's general operations.

We will need to add part of these donations to our reserves, which are meant to enable us to keep operating in the case of a possible downturn. That still leaves enough to expand our staff by two or three positions. We will be able to do some of the work that always needed doing but that we could not undertake.

We have added a position to the tech team so that they can upgrade the support platforms for GNU packages -- repositories, Web pages, translation, testing -- and publish about how we run the FSF without nonfree software.

We intend also to add another person to the Licensing and Compliance team, which certifies distributions and products and enforces the GNU General Public License. Because of the success of Respects Your Freedom, we have a long backlog of products to evaluate. Expanding the team will increase our ability to help people purchase hardware that runs entirely on free software.

We will also fund development of free JavaScript code to make certain Web sites function in the free world. Making sites depend on sending users nonfree JavaScript code has become fashionable, so that organizations and even governments do it without even thinking about it. The option to communicate with Web sites without running nonfree software is a crucial part of freedom for users of the World Wide Web. We will also continue improving the GNU LibreJS extension, and making GNU IceCat protect against JavaScript spyware techniques.

This year's surprise one-time donations make it possible for us to hire additional staff and do more work, but we can't coast very long on them alone; we will need to continue paying the staff to keep doing the work. Most of our income, these donations aside, comes from individual donors giving less than $200 a year. To carry on with this work, we need your support.

The increased operations, as we are planning them now, will still not do all that needs to be done to win freedom in computing. You can enable us to continue -- and to undertake the other work that we are still not doing -- by joining the Free Software Foundation or donating now. Even better, do both!

• bison-3.2.4
• datamash-1.4
• gama-2.02
• gcc-7.4.0
• gdb-8.2.1
• global-6.6.3
• gnun-0.12
• gnupg-2.2.12
• grep-3.3
• groff-1.22.4
• guix-0.16.0
• libmicrohttpd-0.9.62
• libredwg-0.7
• linux-libre-4.20-gnu
• mes-0.19
• mtools-4.0.23
• nettle-3.4.1
• parallel-20181222
• sed-4.7
• unifont-11.0.03
• wget-1.20

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.

The beginning of a new year invests us with new hope for the future: while the free software movement has been dealt some harsh blows in 2018, here at the Free Software Foundation (FSF) we have a lot of reasons for optimism as well.

The public is slowly becoming aware that Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, and other purveyors of proprietary software don’t have their best interests at heart, that “smart home” appliances are an unwise buy, and that allowing bulk surveillance in the name of “security” isn’t worth the loss of freedom. The less people outside of the inner circle of tech trust the peddlers of nonfree software and related products, the more open they are to our message; the more the public fights back to defend net neutrality, smash the disastrous EU Copyright Directive Article 13, and demand answers about how social media giants are violating their privacy, the broader our potential audience grows.

In order to create the free world we need, free software must become a "kitchen table" issue. Making that happen is a large part of the FSF’s mission, and it takes the everyday advocacy and hard work of a huge community of supporters to make it possible. It also takes funds for campaigns, software development, and more -- freedom isn’t always gratis, unfortunately. So we’re making one last push to ask you to help us start 2019 in a position of strength.

Our members provide the most crucial building blocks for our movement, and member dues fuel the infrastructure of the FSF and the GNU Project, keep the GNU Press churning out important free software documentation and cool T-shirts, enables the enforcement of copyleft licenses, and so much more. We urge you to start off your new year by becoming a new member of the FSF. Benefits of FSF membership include a 20% discount on FSF merchandise, gratis entrance to the yearly LibrePlanet conference, and more -- plus, as a thank-you gift, we’re sending all new and renewing associate members a fun set of exclusive enamel pins! We're just shy of our goal of 400 new members in this fundraiser period, and with your help, we'll start off 2019 ready to launch software freedom to new frontiers.

In the meantime, the FSF is bigger and better than ever, and more equipped to do the work you count on us to do: standing up against companies, governments, and programs that abuse your computing freedom, and expanding your ability to replace nonfree programs with free software that meets all of your computing needs. Keep an eye on our blogs, our news page, and our GNU Social, Diaspora, and Twitter accounts for the latest news. With your help, we can make this the best year for free software yet.

When I look back on 2018, of course I see successes for user freedom across the world: the appeal in Christoph Hellwig's GPL compliance case against VMWare is moving forward; Google employees are rallying against Dragonfly, the authoritarian search engine being built for the Chinese government; the Free Software Foundation's (FSF) home state of Massachusetts is taking steps for the Right to Repair; and people all over the world shared their tips and tricks to leading safer digital lives -- just to name a few! It's hard not to be impressed and inspired by everything the free software -- and greater digital rights -- community has done so much over the past year.

But the work we need to do for freedom is far from over. I want to highlight just a few of the (many) losses from 2018. I think these make it clear why the work of organizations like the FSF is so important. The FSF sets a hard line for freedom -- uncompromising in our ideology and bringing it to everything we do. I look at this list and am reminded why the FSF exists, why we need to keep fighting, and why we can only succeed by rallying as a community.

Project Dragonfly

Dragonfly, mentioned above, is a censored search engine Google is likely building for use in China. It is a travesty for the future of software freedom in China. It is explicitly designed to allow censorship of the Web and Web access.

Project Dragonfly was "effectively ended" in mid-December, after five months of hard efforts by Google staff, journalists, and activists around the world. This is a great success, and should be celebrated, but Dragonfly never should have existed in the first place. We have no doubt that someone will try this again, with or without Google.

What does this mean for free software? Projects like Dragonfly allow greater targeting of tools used to create, maintain, share, and use free software. We know from experience that the Chinese government will use this power to block access to important free software, especially in the categories of cryptography and security. It is possible that users would not even be able to learn about free software.

On the note of censorship...

The European Copyright Directive and Censorship Machines

Activists and activist organizations in the European Union use the term "Censorship Machines" for the upload filters the European Copyright Directive will require sites to install. These attempts to "prevent copyright infringement" only serve to stifle creativity and software freedom. You can read more at juliareda.eu.

While a first round of voting saw the proposed Copyright Directive rejected, it later passed onto next steps, bringing us closer to a more controlled, more dystopian Internet and Web.

What does this mean for free software? One of the themes from 2018 is greater government and corporate control over what we can access on the Web and how we interact with the Internet. According to the Free Software Foundation Europe, Article 13 "imposes preventive blocking of online code repositories."

Net neutrality, the FCC, and the ongoing battle for freedom on the Net

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted to gut net neutrality protections in the United States. In the US, Title II is a provision that treated Internet Service Providers (ISPs) as "common carriers," or organizations that are required to provide "general service to the public without discrimination." This is the closest thing the US had to providing net neutrality.

In 2018, the US Congress created a discharge petition to overturn the FCC's ruling. As of writing this, the House of Representatives is waiting to vote on the petition.

What does this mean for free software? This is a twist on how Article 13 affects us, with the government allowing corporate control over what we see and do on the Internet. With net neutrality protections gone, ISPs can (and will) throttle access to Web sites and users that aren't able to pay extra fees. This will impact smaller Web sites, including code sharing sites and other tools we use to build and share free software. It will give major DRM-ed Web sites a privileged status, as they will be the ones able to pay extra fees, and they already have good relationships with the ISPs.

Oracle, Inc. v. Google, Inc.

In the words of Parker Higgins, "you wouldn't reimplement an API." The US Federal Circuit agrees.

The Oracle v. Google case concerning the copyright of Java APIs, originally from 2010, continues to this day. After years of back and forth, 2016 brought good news: a jury found Google’s reimplementation of Oracle’s Java APIs to be fair use and therefore acceptable. However, Oracle appealed, and this year the Federal Circuit ruled in favor of Oracle, finding Google’s use of the Java APIs to be copyright infringement.

Read the FSF's 2012 and 2014 statements on the matter.

What does this mean for free software? This ruling is a big loss for interoperability in software. With the recent results of this case, and the potential for large penalties due to copyright infringement, developing free software through API compatibility could become a legally risky activity. This ruling could fundamentally alter the standard software practice of interoperability through APIs.

Licensing and the Commons Clause

I'd be remiss to not mention one of the most contentious licensing debates in recent history: the Commons Clause.

The Commons Clause isn't a license per se, but something to add to a pre-existing license. Released towards the end of 2018 by Redis, the misleadingly named Commons Clause is a non-commercial use clause, and using it renders a previously free license nonfree.

What does this mean for free software? This is a risk to user freedom, as it makes a free license into a nonfree one. It does not guarantee the four freedoms of free software, and it does not respect user (or developer) rights. Not only does the Commons Clause set a precedent that a free license can be contorted into a nonfree one, it could potentially confuse people looking to use free software.

In summary...

These are just a few of the setbacks software freedom took in 2018. Each one reminds me why I do what I do at the FSF every day -- stand up for user rights by standing up for software freedom. I hope you'll look at this list and not feel despondent. Instead, I ask you to look at it as a to-do list for 2019 -- seeing where and how we can do better, what controversies are on the horizon, and how we can keep working together for a freer world. If you want to support the work of the FSF in 2019, please consider becoming a member.

I started this by mentioning a few of the successes we saw in 2018. These aren't the only ones! Read more about the small victories of 2018 here.