As a part of my project to make the Free Software Directory mobile friendly, I can add extensions, modify the code, and format the pages the way I like. I have complete freedom to experiment on their development site as much as I want. It's wonderful to be able to work on something I really enjoy under the guidance of experienced mentors.

What is the Free Software Directory?

The Free Software Directory is a project of the Free Software Foundation that catalogs free software and allows people to download free software with verified free licenses. In 2011, it was re-launched as a wiki, using MediaWiki and Semantic MediaWiki to give users greater freedom to add, use or modify its textual data.

My work:

After setting up Trisquel (a fully free operating system and GNU/Linux distribution) on my machine and getting access to the development server, I was good to go by the second day of my internship. I had already done a lot of research, so I knew what I was going for.

MediaWiki offers a simple way to make any wiki mobile-optimized. The extension MobileFrontend provides various site transformations that make your wiki mobile-friendly. It comes with useful features like a mobile menu and section collapsing, and has a very simple reader-oriented interface. It can be installed very easily. People with less experience don't need to spend time learning how to understand complex code. The CSS of the mobile theme can also be edited to achieve desired customizations using MediaWiki:Mobile.css (which is a Web page on your wiki, a counterpart of MediaWiki:Common.css). In short, MobileFrontend can give a very effective mobile-optimized view without much hassle. (For more information, see the project page.)

I installed MobileFrontend from the MediaWiki extension distributor and extracted the files locally. Then I uploaded them to the extensions directory in the root, i.e. /var/www/w/extensions.

Next, I had to edit LocalSettings.php. I used Vim for that. Vim is a very efficient and simple text editor. I was going to use Vim for the first time, so I spent some time before that going through Vimtutor.

After ensuring that the extension was installed properly, I couldn't wait to see how the site looked on mobile. I opened its mobile view on my desktop, and that was when I realized that while MobileFrontend is able to make most of the pages mobile optimized, it doesn't necessarily make it "mobile friendly." I checked the development site for various bugs and text which was not properly aligned.

Issues I faced:

1. The HeaderTabs extension is incompatible with MobileFrontend. Only the first tab is displayed, and the rest of the tabs (and their text) disappear. The FSD uses HeaderTabs to display various entries. It was necessary to either fix those or disable them for mobile view. The solution: I was able to disable HeaderTabs using MobileDetect extension. It introduces a function called mobiledetect(), which returns true when a mobile device is detected, and false otherwise. I added a simple if statement in LocalSettings.php which excluded HeaderTabs from loading on mobile browsers.
2. The mobile menu looks incomplete; there doesn't seem to be an easy way to add important links to the mobile menu.
3. Noticed by Ian (one of my mentors): 2 column view doesn't merge into a single column during mobile view, i.e. things that appear on the right column in a wide desktop view should come in-line in the mobile view. This is caused by the styling of the form: float: left; float: right, etc. Solution: I replaced those styles with div classes left-float and right-float. Then I defined those classes in MediaWiki:Common.css and used a media query to bring the 2 columns in-line for screen size lesser than 800 px.
4. Suggested by Andrew (my mentor), tables appear crammed in small screens. I am currently working on this issue. With the help of flexboxes and CSS, I am trying to make long horizontal tables appear vertical during mobile view.

Things I plan to work on in the coming week:

1. Add the FSD logo to the mobile site
2. Theme the mobile site so that it looks more like the FSF Directory theme
3. Find a way to enable mobile view on desktops of smaller sizes (less than 800 px)
4. And most importantly, spend time learning, researching, and building something useful.

We recently asked you to contact your Members of European Parliment (MEPs) to express your opposition to the Copyright Directive, a proposed policy including a section called Article 13. Article 13 threatens free speech, free culture, and free software. A number of you contacted your MEPs and wrote back to us -- thank you!

In spite of your efforts, 15 MEPs in the Legal Affairs Committee (JURI) voted against Web freedom and passed the Copyright Directive through its first round of approval.

But there's still hope! The second round is coming up this Thursday, July 5th. We're urging you to contact your MEPs before then.

Talk to your MEP before July 5th to #SaveYourInternet.

How to contact your MEP

Find their details

Europa.eu contains contact information for all MEPs. This includes email addresses, Twitter accounts, mailing addresses, and phone numbers.

Call

Calling is one of the most important things you can do. Try a sample script:

Hi, I'm [NAME]. I live in [LOCATION]. I'm calling to let you know that I oppose Article 13 of the Copyright Directive. Thank you.

It's that simple. If you want to say more, tell the person you're talking with a bit about yourself -- are you an artist concerned for the future of your art? A developer or free software activist looking out for software freedom? Maybe you're a student, parent, or voter concerned about the future of the Web.

Feel free to talk more about why you care about Article 13 and its impact, including the ways it's bad for the Web, free culture, free speech, and free software. Some key points include:

• It harms free speech and free expression.
• It limits lawful use of commentary, parody, and remix.
• It will automatically filter out source code that is being legally used under free software licenses.

For more ideas, Julia Reda has written about some of the consequences of Article 13 passing.

Email your MEP

Not sure what to say? Try this sample script, or write your own:

Dear [NAME],

I am writing to urge you to vote against the Copyright Directive this July.

The Copyright Directive will turn code sharing platforms that are used to build software into censorship machines. When we say software, not only do we mean things like apps for our convenience, but also the digital infrastructure that runs our world.

Much of this technology is free software -- software that uses licenses that respect the freedom of users and developers of software. Among other things, it allows developers to use, modify, and reuse code. Automatic filtering would prevent the legal and rightful uploading of code that uses these licenses -- a major blow for development and digital freedom.

I hope you'll do the right thing and vote for freedom with a vote against the Copyright Directive.

Cheers,
[NAME]

Social media

We know that many of your MEPs maintain accounts on Twitter. You can Tweet at them, using the hashtags SaveYourInternet, CensorshipMachine, and DeleteArt13.

What else can I do?

Share this post with your friends! Educating others and raising awareness of these issues helps people understand how important these policies are.

If you write to your MEP, share your letters with us (info@fsf.org) and those in your networks: having examples of what to say makes it easier to write a letter. Please feel free to also contact us about phone calls you make.

To learn more, you can check out the links below:

• Various articles by April concerning the latest developments in the fight against the Copyright Directive, and actions you can take.
• A detailed analysis (with flow charts!) from Communia.
• Writing by Julia Reda, an MEP.

You can also support the work of the Free Software Foundation by supporting our Spring fundraising and membership drive.

We recently added the EUPL-1.2 to our list of Various Licenses and Comments About Them. This list helps users to understand whether a particular license is a free software license, and whether it is compatible with the GNU General Public License (GNU GPL). Like the previous version of the EUPL (EUPL-1.1), the EUPL-1.2 is included in the section for free licenses that are GNU GPL-incompatible, but with an important caveat. While the EUPL-1.2's copyleft by itself is incompatible with the GNU GPL, the license provides a few mechanisms for re-licensing which enable combination with GNU GPL-licensed works. We explain the situation more fully in the entry itself:

This is a free software license. By itself, it has a copyleft comparable
to the GPL's, and incompatible with it. However, it gives recipients
ways to relicense the work under the terms of other selected licenses,
and some of those—the Eclipse Public License in particular—only provide
a weaker copyleft. Thus, developers can't rely on this license to
provide a strong copyleft.

The EUPL allows relicensing to GPLv2 only and GPLv3 only, because those
licenses are listed as two of the alternative licenses that users may
convert to. It also, indirectly, allows relicensing to GPL version 3 or
any later version, because there is a way to relicense to the CeCILL v2,
and the CeCILL v2 gives a way to relicense to any version of the GNU GPL.

To do this two-step relicensing, you need to first write a piece of code
which you can license under the CeCILL v2, or find a suitable module
already available that way, and add it to the program. Adding that code
to the EUPL-covered program provides grounds to relicense it to the
CeCILL v2. Then you need to write a piece of code which you can license
under the GPLv3+, or find a suitable module already available that way,
and add it to the program. Adding that code to the CeCILL-covered
program provides grounds to relicense it to GPLv3+.

These comments are very similar to the ones we made for the EUPL-1.1, as the EUPL-1.2 is an update that is very much in line with its predecessor. The biggest change was adding the GNU GPLv3 only as an alternative license, simplifying the process of incorporating EUPL-1.2 code into a GNU GPLv3 only project. Note, however, that the two-step re-licensing process previously described is still needed in order to incorporate EUPL-1.2 code into a GNU GPLv3+ project.

With all that said, the EUPL-1.2 is the newest addition to our list of free licenses, but more will be added in the future. To keep up to date, here's what you can do:

• To keep informed about changes to our license list and other licensing-related news and announcements, subscribe to our Licensing Updates Mailing List
• Help us make a stand for software freedom by becoming an FSF Associate Member or consider making a donation

The 1990s have come back to haunt us as the US Congress attempts to extend the scope of copyright law again, just two decades after the last extension (which added twenty years to the terms of existing copyrights at the time), and this time their sights are set on the Internet.

Read on to learn more, including how to take action before Congress takes its next step with the bill, on Thursday, June 28.

Creative Commons founder and former Free Software Foundation (FSF) board member Lawrence Lessig recently explained the ugly consequences of the Compensating Legacy Artists for their Songs, Service, and Important Contributions to Society (CLASSICS) Act, which was passed by the US House earlier this year and is now before the Senate Judiciary Committee as part of the omnibus Music Modernization Act. Lessig has a long history in the realm of copyright law -- he was the lead counsel on an unsuccessful challenge to the previous extension of US copyright law, the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act.

The CLASSICS Act aims to fence in another arena in which users enjoy published works, Lessig writes, creating "a new digital performance right -- basically the right to control copies of recordings on any digital platform (ever hear of the Internet?) -- for musical recordings made before 1972" (hence the "cute" acronym, CLASSICS). The bill would grant such recordings a new "protection" through 2067, which actually means being copyright restricted for up to 144 years, compared to 95 years for print works from the same period.

Once again, this expansion of the scope of US copyright law flies in the face of the intention of the US Constitution, because its beneficiaries are not the public, nor artists, but corporate interests. Under the US Constitution, "copyright exists to benefit users...not for the sake of publishers or authors," and the Supreme Court has affirmed that intention -- the readers, music listeners, and audiences that experience copyrighted material are supposed to come first. In reality, US copyright law has acted as if the benefits to the public and to publishers are of equal importance, and as if its goal is to maximize the number of published works, thereby necessitating granting publishers maximum power. As a result, copyright law continues to grant publishers broader powers for increasing periods of time. (See "Misinterpreting Copyright" for an extensive examination of this problem.)

The consequences for music fans could be devastating, at a time when people increasingly use the Internet to listen to music, via digital music services and Web radio stations, according to reports from Nielsen and the Guardian. This bill will decrease access to recordings of music made between 1923 and 1972, because those who make such recordings available on the Internet will face serious legal consequences if they do so without a license.

The bill will inevitably further consolidate access to music recordings online, because those who cannot afford to pay licensing fees will risk fines if they defy the law. Big companies that already use Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) to stream music on the Web, from Sirius XM to Spotify, will have the advantage. As EFF reports, some already pay royalties for some of these recordings via private agreements with record labels -- smaller Web streamers are likely to be unable to manage the additional expense, or they could be shut out by exclusive licenses granted to bigger services.

Of greatest concern to the FSF is the effect this bill could have on free software for digital music, and the way it could allow DRM to grow on the Internet. Publishers often add DRM to their works under the guise of protection against copyright infringement, but in reality, DRM is a publisher's means of controlling every aspect of a piece of digital media -- and taking away user freedom. DRM is incompatible with free software, and its proliferation actively undermines widespread use of free software for digital media.

The CLASSICS Act was combined into an omnibus bill with the Musical Works Modernization Act and the Allocation for Music Producers (AMP) Act, and the Judiciary Committee heard testimony on the proposal on May 15, 2018 -- transcripts can be reviewed here (there is also video, but it requires nonfree JavaScript to view). The conversation largely omits a broader concern that ties together the effect of copyright overreach on arts and culture with its effect on free software: increased copyright restriction encourages lawsuits against people who share music. People become afraid to share digital media, believing sharing is theft.

Take action!

If you're not in the US, let us know your country by updating your profile so we can send you more relevant info. In the meantime, please also help us spread the word to your contacts in the US.

By Wednesday, June 27th, call a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee (especially if you live in their home state) and urge them to strike the CLASSICS copyright expansion from the Music Modernization Act.

Committee members include Republicans Chuck Grassley* (Chair, IA), Orrin Hatch* (UT), John Cornyn (TX), Ted Cruz (TX), Jeff Flake (AZ), Thom Tillis* (NC), Lindsey Graham (SC), Michael Lee (UT), Ben Sasse (NE), Mike Crapo* (ID), John Kennedy* (LA); and Democrats Dianne Feinstein* (Ranking Member, CA), Patrick Leahy* (VT), Sheldon Whitehouse* (RI), Christopher Coons* (DE), Mazie Hirono* (HI), Kamala Harris* (CA), Dick Durbin* (IL), Amy Klobuchar* (MN), Richard Blumenthal* (CT), and Cory Booker* (NJ). Those members with asterisks following their names were cosponsors of the CLASSICS Act before it was merged with the Music Modernization Act or are cosponsors of the Music Modernization Act -- yes, nearly all members of the Judiciary Committee cosponsored at least one of the bills.

Not sure what to say? Try using the following script:

*Hello, I live in CITY/STATE. I am calling to urge you to stop the overzealous expansion of copyright in the Music Modernization Act. The text in the CLASSICS Act portion of the bill would expand copyright for recordings made before 1972, creating a barrier for music listeners by expanding the use of Digital Restrictions Management, which is incompatible with the free software I use to listen to digital music. This is not what the US Constitution intended copyright to be. I hope SENATOR will do the right thing and strike the CLASSICS Act portion of the Music Modernization Act. Thank you for your time.*

But how do I call the Senators?

• Find their numbers here.

• Dial the Senate at (202) 224-3121 and they will connect you.