It was a slow month for GNU/FSF news but even during a slow month
there's plenty to tell you about. The adoption of the GPLv3 continues,
over 300 packages are now using it. The 2007 Trophées du
Libre awards are coming up soon. The FSF Europe published a new
issue of their newsletter, full of interesting free software news from
Europe. There was a minor GCC release, and the last
new GCC release under the GPLv2 license. RMS will be in Peru this month,
giving talks at several schools and conferences. Read on for all the
details.
Trophées du Libre 2007
Trophées du
Libre is an international competition awarding recognition to
innovate free software in six different categories: security,
games/multimedia, education, scientific, public sector, and enterprise
software. The first event in 2003 had 113 participants from 18
countries. This
year's jury will select the winners on 29 November 2007 in Soissons.
Find
out if your project is eligible. If it is, why not submit
it for consideration?
New FSF Europe Newsletter
The FSFE has posted a new monthly newsletter. This edition covers
topics that include FSFE's General Assembly, The first Benelux
fellowship meeting, the GPLv3 release, Free Software personal
consultancy for businesses, Six questions to national standardisation
bodies, info about Georg Greve in India, FTF useful tips translated to
Asian languages, and the importance of Free Software in Austrian
Schools.
GPL Version 3 Progress
Despite the controversy about the GPLv3 prior to the final version,
there has been a fairly steady migration of free software to the new
version of the license. Well over 300 free software packages have
already converted or announced conversions. Bigger packages are
beginning to make the shift now. See the recent Samba
announcement and GCC
announcement for example. One other that made big news, at
least in the mainstream press, was SugarCRM's
announcement. More are expected. One place you can track the
progress is Palamida's GPLv3
Information site. Keep in mind this only represents a subset of the
conversions to GPLv3 as it relies on voluntary reporting by the authors
of each package.
GNU GCC News
Gcc 4.2.1 was released on July 18. This is a minor bug fix release
and the last release under GPLv2. All future releases will be under the
GNU GPL version 3.
GNOME News
The 8th annual GNOME Users and
Developers European Conference (GUADEC) is over. Missed it? Check
out a few of the GUADEC
2007 photos over at flickr.
FSF High Priority Free Software Projects
The Free Software Foundation maintains a list of what they believe
are the highest priority projects at any given time. If you're looking
for something fun to work on or just want to make the world a better
place, this is a good place to start.
"There is a vital need to draw the free software community's
attention to the ongoing development work on these particular projects.
These projects are important because computer users are continually
being seduced into using non-free software, because there is no adequate
free replacement. Please support these projects."
Where's RMS This Month?
Richard Stallman will be in Peru this month. You can hear him at the
UDEP Campus Piura on August 8, 9, and 10. On August 13 he will give a
talk, titled "El Movimiento de Software Libre y el Sistema Operativo
GNU/Linux", at JORESOL (Jornadas Regionales de Software Libre) in
Chiciayo, Peru. On August 14, he will speak at CLEI 2007 (Conferencia
Latinoamericana de Informatica) in Lima, Peru. And, on August 17 he'll
speak at Ciudad Universitaria UNT, in Trujillo, Peru.
This monthly news summary about the Free Software Foundation and GNU
project was distilled down from FSF press releases, blogs, email lists,
and website news pages. The idea is to provide a concise summary of
FSF/GNU news from the past month for those who don't have the time or
interest to find and read all the original news sources within that
community. I'm also looking for a volunteer to take over writing this
news summary each month.