The General Services Administration is now offering at their Section 508 site their free STEP508 software to help government agencies...

BOSTON, Massachusetts, USA -- Thursday, November 30, 2023 -- The Free Software Foundation (FSF) announced today that EmacsConf will join the Working Together for Free Software Fund. The one and only conference dedicated to the joy of Emacs is joining just before their event on December 2 and 3, 2023.

BOSTON (October 8, 2024) -- The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has announced that it is taking part in the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)'s consortium on the safety of (so-called) artificial intelligence, particularly with reference to "generative" AI systems. The FSF will ensure the free software perspective is adequately represented in these discussions.

Welcome to the *Free Software Supporter*, the Free Software Foundation's (FSF) monthly news digest and action update -- being read by you and **231,236** other activists.

Welcome to the Free Software Supporter, the Free Software Foundation's (FSF) monthly news digest and action update -- being read by you and 231,355 other activists.

Debt Resolution Technology to Alleviate Alarming CFPB Findings and Disrupt Debt Settlement Industry

Storage devices prove handy to store precious moments and important files, but what if those files are lost? That's where Recoverit – a free deleted file recovery software can help!

In celebration of Halloween 2019, TunesKit launches the biggest promotion: both registered and new users can get free software and enjoy more discounts from Oct. 24 to Nov. 06.

Bradley and Karen have an introductory discussion on how non-profit governance interacts with Free Software projects and what issues are important for developers who want their project to have a non-profit existence.

Show Notes:

Segment 0 (00:37)

• Bradley and Karen began the discussion by commenting on this blog post by Andy Updegrove about non-profit governance. (01:50)
• Bradley and Karen tend to agree that non-profit settings are better places to foster and help Free Software development. (03:40)
• Bradley mentioned that Roland McGrath wrote GNU C Library (and other GNU programs) while working as an employee at the FSF, and many of those programs are now often maintained by Red Hat (or other company's) developers, under the auspices of the GNU project, as overseen by the FSF. (04:50)
• Corporate form and organization questions should be secondary to project leadership ones. (09:50)
• One of the most important things is to have an organization in a place where people are willing to do the work to keep the organization going. (20:10)
• Enthusiasm to keep the organization running is the most important resource for running the organization. (22:26)

Send feedback and comments on the cast to <oggcast@faif.us>. You can keep in touch with Free as in Freedom on our IRC channel, #faif on irc.freenode.net, and by following Conservancy on on Twitter and and FaiF on Twitter.

Free as in Freedom is produced by Dan Lynch of danlynch.org. Theme music written and performed by Mike Tarantino with Charlie Paxson on drums.

The content of this audcast, and the accompanying show notes and music are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike 4.0 license (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Note: initially, from 2013-08-01 18:30 through 2013-08-02 08:40 (US/Eastern), the audio file links in the feed did not work. That has been corrected.

Bradley and Karen interview Alison Chaiken about Free Software in cars.

Show Notes:

Segment 0 (00:00:38)

Bradley and Karen introduce the interview.

Segment 1 (00:01:43)

• Bradley and Karen interview Alison Chaiken about Free Software in the automotive industry.
• Alison mentioned the Genivi Alliance, which is an industry trade association with some interest in “Open Source”.
• Alison presented a session at LibrePlanet about the Right to Repair act in Massachusetts. (00:14:30)
• Alison encouraged listens to get involved with Right to Repair and the Massachusetts Right to Repair.

Segment 2 (00:36:09)

• Karen moderated a panel at the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit 2013 on Automotive issues (37:12)

Send feedback and comments on the cast to <oggcast@faif.us>. You can keep in touch with Free as in Freedom on our IRC channel, #faif on irc.freenode.net, and by following Conservancy on on Twitter and and FaiF on Twitter.

Free as in Freedom is produced by Dan Lynch of danlynch.org. Theme music written and performed by Mike Tarantino with Charlie Paxson on drums.

The content of this audcast, and the accompanying show notes and music are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike 4.0 license (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Bradley and Karen discuss the talk, Why the free software phone doesn't exist by Aaron Williamson given at FOSDEM 2013 on Sunday 3 February 2013.

Show Notes:

Segment 0 (00:37)

Bradley and Karen introduce the talk.

Segment 1 (04:06)

Aaron's slides area available.

Segment 2 (56:41)

• Bradley mentioned dakota imaging where he used to work. (1:02:15)
dacotag imaging
• Karen mentioned Aaron's OSCON 2010 talk (but we incorrectly said it was 2009). (1:04:35)

Send feedback and comments on the cast to <oggcast@faif.us>. You can keep in touch with Free as in Freedom on our IRC channel, #faif on irc.freenode.net, and by following Conservancy on on Twitter and and FaiF on Twitter.

Free as in Freedom is produced by Dan Lynch of danlynch.org. Theme music written and performed by Mike Tarantino with Charlie Paxson on drums.

The content of this audcast, and the accompanying show notes and music are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike 4.0 license (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Note: Episode 0x5A was released out of sequence, but they are in the order of release date on faif.us (rather than numerical order).

Karen and Bradley discuss connections between the so-called “Gamergate” controversy and how it relates to the Free Software community and a few obvious legal issues.

Show Notes:

Segment 0 (00:37)

• Karen asked if Bradley had heard of the Gamergate situation. (01:30)
• Matthew Garrett wrote a blog post regarding this topic entitled Actions have consequences (or: why I'm not fixing Intel's bugs any more) (10:23)
• Mathew was attacked on LKML about this blog post (10:50)
• Lennart Poettering also wrote an essay recently about aggression and attacking people in Free Software communities. (12:12)
• Karen mentioned the harassment Kathy Sierra faced in the late 2000s. (13:00)
• Bradley called out Linux Foundation to ask why they tacitly support the bad behavior by its employees and others in the Linux Project (14:35, 31:10)
• Bradley mentioned that Antti Aumo in his LinuxCon Europe 2011 keynote, said that a great thing about the Internet of Things is that you can put a lock on your fridge when the wife's on a diet. (16:32)
• Bradley mentioned the Eddie Murphy's Saturday Night Live skit, White Like Me, which according to the transcript, originally aired on 1984-12-15 on SNL. (24:45)
• Bradley mentioned FaiF 0x13, which discussed torts and why they're important. (29:50)
• Bradley wrote a blog post about Bradley mentioned his blog post about John Oliver's discussion of the Miss America Pageant (43:30)
• Bradley suggested that Intel should have instead given the Gamasutra money to Society of Women Engineers Scholarship fund. (45:30)
• Karen mentioned the statement Intel published a statement regarding the situation. (47:10)

Send feedback and comments on the cast to <oggcast@faif.us>. You can keep in touch with Free as in Freedom on our IRC channel, #faif on irc.freenode.net, and by following Conservancy on on Twitter and and FaiF on Twitter.

Free as in Freedom is produced by Dan Lynch of danlynch.org. Theme music written and performed by Mike Tarantino with Charlie Paxson on drums.

The content of this audcast, and the accompanying show notes and music are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike 4.0 license (CC BY-SA 4.0).

  Too many distractions can bring down your productivity, but so can boredom, a whole pile of brainless and repetitive tasks and so on and so forth. Here we’ve compiled a list of apps and Chrome e...