The Free Software Foundation describes how "After months of preparation and excitement, we finally came together on November 21 for a global online hackathon to support free software projects and "put a spotlight on the difficult and often thankless work that free software hackers carry out..."

Based on how many of you dropped in over the weekend and were incredibly engaged in the important work that is improving free software, either as a spectator or as a participant, this goal was accomplished. And it's all thanks to you!

Friday started a little rocky with a datacenter outage affecting most FSF services. Participants spread out to work on six different free software projects over forty-eight hours as our tech team worked to restore all FSF sites with the help and support of the community. Over three hundred folks were tuned in at a time, some to participate in the hackathon and others to follow the progress being made. As a community, we got a lot done over the weekend...

It was amazing to see so many of you take a little (or a lot of!) time out of your busy schedules to improve free software, and we're incredibly grateful for each and every one of you. It really energizes us and shows us how much we can accomplish when we work together over even just a couple days. Not only was this a fantastic sight to see because of the work we got done, but it was also a very fitting way to conclude our fortieth anniversary celebration events. Free software has been and always will be a community effort, one that continues to get better and better because of the dedicated developers, contributors, and users who ensure its existence. Thank you for celebrating forty years of the FSF and fighting for a freer future for us all.

Ubuntu "is adopting the memory-safe Rust language," reports ZDNet, citing remarks at this year's Ubuntu Summit from Jon Seager, Canonical's VP of engineering for Ubuntu: . Seager said the engineering team is focused on replacing key system components with Rust-based alternatives to enhance safety and resilience, starting with Ubuntu 25.10. He stressed that resilience and memory safety, not just performance, are the principal drivers: "It's the enhanced resilience and safety that is more easily achieved with Rust ports that are most attractive to me". This move is echoed in Ubuntu's adoption of sudo-rs, the Rust implementation of sudo, with fallback and opt-out mechanisms for users who want to use the old-school sudo command.

In addition to sudo-rs, Ubuntu 26.04 will use the Rust-based uutils/coreutils for Linux's default core utilities. This setup includes ls, cp, mv, and dozens of other basic Unix command-line tools. This Rust reimplementation aims for functional parity with GNU coreutils, with improved safety and maintainability.

On the desktop front, Ubuntu 26.04 will also bring seamless TPM-backed full disk encryption. If this approach reminds you of Windows BitLocker or MacOS FileVault, it should. That's the idea.
In other news, Canonical CEO Mark Shuttleworth said "I'm a believer in the potential of Linux to deliver a desktop that could have wider and universal appeal." (Although he also thinks "the open-source community needs to understand that building desktops for people who aren't engineers is different. We need to understand that the 'simple and just works' is also really important.")

Shuttleworth answered questions from Slashdot's readers in 2005 and 2012.

"Plasma is a popular desktop (and mobile) environment for GNU/Linux and other UNIX-like operating systems," writes longtime Slashdot reader jrepin. "Among other things, it also powers the desktop mode of the Steam Deck gaming handheld. The KDE community today announced the latest release: Plasma 6.5." From the announcement: This fresh new release is all about fine-tuning, fresh features, and a making everything smooth and sleek for everyone. The new version brings automatic light-to-dark theme switching based on the time of day. You can configure which global themes it switches between. You can also configure whether you want the wallpaper to switch between its light and dark versions based on the color scheme, the time of day, or be always light or dark.

Next up is a "Pinned clipboard items" feature, which lets you save text you use regularly into the clipboard. Breeze-themed windows will now have the same level of roundness in all four corners, even the bottom one. Flatpak Permissions page has been transformed into a general Application Permissions page, where you can configure applications' ability to do things like take screenshots and accept remote control requests. The utility that reads the level of ink or toner from your printer now informs you when it's running low or empty.

For the gamers out there, you can now see more relevant info about game controllers on System Settings' Game Controller page. Artists among you can now configure any rotary dials and touch rings on your drawing tablet. Users sensitive to color can now make use of a grayscale color filter, which desaturates or removes color systemwide.

Plasma 6.5 implements support for an experimental version of the Wayland picture-in-picture protocol that promises to allow apps like Firefox to eventually display proper PiP windows that stay above others automatically. Support for "overlay planes" was added, which can reduce CPU usage and power draw when displaying full-screen content using a compatible GPU. You can read more about these and many other new features in the Plasma 6.5 release announcement and complete changelog.

"Microsoft does everything in its power to keep Windows users under its control," warns the Free Software Foundation in a new blog post this week.

They argue that the lack of freedom that comes with proprietary code "forces users to surrender to decisions made by Microsoft to maximize its profits and further lock users into its product ecosystem" — describing both the problem and one possible solution: [IT management company Lansweeper] found that of the 30 million enterprise systems they manage, over 40% are incompatible with Windows 11. This is due to the hardware requirements like Treacherous Platform Module version 2.0 — a proprietary chip that uses cryptography that users can't influence or audit to restrict their control over the system.

The end of Windows 10 support is the perfect opportunity to break free from this cycle and switch to GNU/Linux operating system (GNU/Linux OS), a system that respects your freedom...

The endless, freedom-restricting cycle of planned obsolescence is not inevitable. Instead of paying Microsoft for continued updates or buying new hardware, Windows users left behind by Microsoft should install GNU/Linux. Free Software Foundation certified GNU/Linux distributions respect the user's freedom to run their computer as they wish, to study and modify its source code, and to redistribute copies. They don't require update contracts, often run faster on older hardware, and, most importantly, put you in control.
"If you're already a GNU/Linux user, you have an important role to play. Help your friends and family make the switch by sharing your knowledge, help them install a free-as-in-freedom OS. Show them what it means to have real control over their computing!"

prisoninmate shares a report from 9to5Linux: Dubbed Questing Quokka, Ubuntu 25.10 is powered by the latest and greatest Linux 6.17 kernel series for top-notch hardware support and ships with the latest GNOME 49 desktop environment, defaulting to a Wayland-only session for the Ubuntu Desktop flavor, meaning there's no other session to choose from the login screen. Ubuntu Desktop also ships with two new apps, namely GNOME's Loupe instead of Eye of GNOME as the default image viewer, as well as Ptyxis instead of GNOME Terminal as the default terminal emulator. Also, there's a new update notification that will be shown with options to open Software Updater or install updates directly.'

Other highlights of Ubuntu 25.10 include sudo-rs as the default implementation of sudo, Dracut as the default initramfs-tools, Chrony as the default NTP (Network Time Protocol) client, Rust Coreutils as the default implementation of GNU Core Utilities, and TPM-backed FDE (Full Disk Encryption) recovery key management. Moreover, Ubuntu 25.10 adds NVIDIA Dynamic Boost support and enables suspend-resume support in the proprietary NVIDIA graphics driver to prevent corruption and freezes when waking an NVIDIA desktop. For Intel users, Ubuntu 25.10 introduces support for new Intel integrated and discrete GPUs. Ubuntu 25.10 is available for download here.

From 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. today (EDT), the Free Software Foundation celebrates its 40th anniversary with an online and in-person event. "We will broadcast the talks and workshops via a fully free software livestream on fsf.org/live," according to the FSF's official "FSF40 Celebration" page. "Everyone will be able to join the discussion via the #fsf40 IRC channel on Libera.Chat."

"4 decades, 4 freedoms, 4 all users" is the event's slogan.

And during the ceremony, a 40th-anniversary cake was sliced by newly-elected FSF president Ian Kelling (who was unanimously confirmed by FSF board members): Kelling, age 43, has held the role of a board member and a voting member since March 2021. The board said of Kelling's confirmation: "His hands-on technical experience resulting from his position as the organization's senior systems administrator proved invaluable for his work on the board of directors... He has the technical knowledge to speak with authority on most free software issues, and he has a strong connection with the community as an active speaker and blogger."

Kelling earned a bachelor's degree in computer science and is a continuous user, developer, and advocate for free software. His personal commitment to complete software freedom has been shaped by his past experiences working as a software developer for proprietary software companies while using, learning, and contributing to GNU/Linux on his own time.

"Ian has shown good judgment on the board, and a firm commitment to the free software movement," FSF founder and Chief GNUisance Richard Stallman said. Outgoing FSF President and long-time board member Geoff Knauth added: "Since joining the board in 2021, Ian has shown a clear understanding of the free software philosophy in today's technology, and a strong vision. He recognizes threats in upcoming technologies, promotes transparency, has played a significant role in designing and implementing the new board recruitment processes, and has always adhered to ethical principles. He has also given me valuable advice at critical moments, for which I am very grateful..."

Kelling will continue to fill the role of senior systems administrator for the FSF, which he has held since 2017, where he leads the FSF's tech team under the direction of Zoë Kooyman, executive director of the FSF. True to the FSF's tradition for this role, he takes on the governance role as a volunteer.
Upcoming on the livestream:

• Free Software Foundation trivia
• LibreLocal group lightning talks
• A panel with the FSF, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) , F-Droid, and Sugar Labs

prisoninmate shares a report from 9to5Linux: The GNOME Project released today GNOME 49 "Brescia" as the latest stable version of this widely used desktop environment for GNU/Linux distributions, a major release that introduces exciting new features. Highlights of GNOME 49 include a new "Do Not Disturb" toggle in Quick Settings, a dedicated Accessibility menu in the login screen, support for handling unknown power profiles in the Quick Settings menu, support for YUV422 and YUV444 (HDR) color spaces, support for passive screen casts, and support for async keyboard map settings.

GNOME 49 also introduces support for media controls, restart and shutdown actions on the lock screen, support for dynamic users for greeter sessions in the GNOME Display Manager (GDM), and support for per-monitor brightness sliders in Quick Settings on multi-monitor setups. For a full list of changes, check out the release notes.

Mark Tyson writes via Tom's Hardware: On this day 34 years ago, an unknown computer science student from Finland announced that a new free operating system project was "starting to get ready." Linus Benedict Torvalds elaborated by explaining that the OS was "just a hobby, [it] won't be big and professional like GNU." Of course, this was the first public outing for the colossal collaborative project that is now known as Linux. Above, you can see Torvalds' first posting regarding Linux to the comp.os.minix newsgroup. The now famously caustic, cantankerous, curmudgeon seemed relatively mild, meek, and malleable in this historic Linux milestone posting.

Torvalds asked the Minix community about their thoughts on a free new OS being prepared for Intel 386 and 486 clones. He explained that he'd been brewing the project since April (a few months prior), and asked for direction. Specifically, he sought input about other Minix users' likes and dislikes of that OS, in order to differentiate Linux. The now renowned developer then provided a rough summary of the development so far. Some features of Linux that Torvalds thought were important, or that he was particularly proud of, were then highlighted in the newsgroup posting. For example, the Linux chief mentioned his OS's multithreaded file system, and its absence of any Minix code. However, he humbly admitted the code as it stood was Intel x86 specific, and thus "is not portable."

Last but not least, Torvalds let it be known that version 0.01 of this free OS would be out in the coming month (September 1991). It was indeed released on September 17, 1991, but someone else decided on the OS name at the last minute. Apparently, Torvalds didn't want to release his new OS under the name of Linux, as it would be too egotistical, too self-aggrandizing. He preferred Freax, a portmanteau word formed from Free-and-X. However, one of Torvald's colleagues, who was the administrator for the project's FTP server, did not think that 'Freax' was an appealing name for the OS. So this co-worker went ahead and uploaded the OS as 'Linux' on that date in September, without asking Torvalds.

The Free Software Foundation announced a special photography contest honoring its 40th anniversary: The technology we use every day has changed dramatically since our founding nearly forty years ago, including the way we interact with it... We're incredibly grateful for the countless hours that developers and users have put into the free software programs that exist today. Without all the people who cared enough to make and use software that respects the four freedoms four decades or even a year ago, we wouldn't have much to celebrate.

We want to honor the hard work that has gone into free software and its development with the FSF40 Photo Contest. Starting on August 14, 2025, we're inviting free software supporters worldwide to share how they use free software on a daily basis. While we can think of hundreds of ways that free software can be used, there's almost certainly many of you who have thought of much more creative ways to involve libre software every day!

Shortly after the photo contest closes on August 31, 2025, we will invite you and other free software supporters to vote for your favorite of the #FSF40Photos... We will be displaying the winning photos at our fortieth [anniversary] celebration in Boston, MA on October 4, 2025 — we hope you get to see them on a big screen with us!
Earlier this month the FSF also shared 40 links from around the FSF and GNU sites "that give a sense of what we've been doing all this time as we work for your freedom." (For example, 2007's announcement of the GNU General Public License, version 3.)

The Free Software Foundation's services face "ongoing (and increasing) distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks," senior systems administrator Ian Kelling wrote Wednesday. But "Even though we are under active attack, gnu.org, ftp.gnu.org, and savannah.gnu.org are up with normal response times at the moment, and have been for the majority of this week, largely thanks to hard work from the Savannah hackers Bob, Corwin, and Luke who've helped us, your sysadmins."

"We've shielded these sites for almost a full year of intense attacks now, and we'll keep on fighting these attacks for as long as they continue." Our infrastructure has been under attack since August 2024. Large Language Model (LLM) web crawlers have been a significant source of the attacks, and as for the rest, we don't expect to ever know what kind of entity is targeting our sites or why.

- In the fall Bulletin, we wrote about the August attack on gnu.org. That attack continues, but we have mitigated it. Judging from the pattern and scope, the goal was likely to take the site down and it was not an LLM crawler. We do not know who or what is behind the attack, but since then, we have had more attacks with even higher severity.

- To begin with, GNU Savannah, the FSF's collaborative software development system, was hit by a massive botnet controlling about five million IPs starting in January. As of this writing, the attack is still ongoing, but the botnet's current iteration is mitigated. The goal is likely to build an LLM training dataset. We do not know who or what is behind this.

- Furthermore, gnu.org and ftp.gnu.org were targets in a new DDoS attack starting on May 27, 2025. Its goal seems to be to take the site down. It is currently mitigated. It has had several iterations, and each has caused some hours of downtime while we figured out how to defend ourselves against it. Here again, the goal was likely to take our sites down and we do not know who or what is behind this.

- In addition, directory.fsf.org, the server behind the Free Software Directory, has been under attack since June 18. This likely is an LLM scraper designed to specifically target Media Wiki sites with a botnet. This attack is very active and now partially mitigated...

Even though we are under active attack, gnu.org, ftp.gnu.org, and savannah.gnu.org are up with normal response times at the moment, and have been for the majority of this week, largely thanks to hard work from the Savannah hackers Bob, Corwin, and Luke who've helped us, your sysadmins. We've shielded these sites for almost a full year of intense attacks now, and we'll keep on fighting these attacks for as long as they continue.
The full-time FSF tech staff is just two systems administrators, "and we currently lack the funds to hire more tech staff any time soon," Kelling points out. Kelling titled his post "our small team vs millions of bots," suggesting that supporters purchase FSF memberships "to improve our staffing situation... Can you join us in our crucial work to guard user freedom and defy dystopia?"

Kelling also points out they're also facing "run-of-the-mill standard crawlers, SEO crawlers, crawlers pretending to be normal users, crawlers pretending to be other crawlers, uptime systems, vulnerability scanners, carrier-grade network address translation, VPNs, and normal browsers hitting our sites..."

"Some of the abuse is not unique to us, and it seems that the health of the web has some serious problems right now."

The Free Software Foundation is a non-profit — and they're having some fun with it.

They've just announced a summer fundraiser, "and that means the GNU Press Shop is open!" From now until July 28, you can buy your FSF gear at the GNU Press shop. First and foremost, there's the launch of the FSF's fortieth anniversary shirt in a summery yellow. We're taking orders for a limited time for these (until July 28), and then printing them — you should have yours on your shoulders a few weeks after the shop closes.

We've also restocked some favorites in the shop:

- A fresh batch of the popular Ada & Zangemann: A Tale of Software, Skateboards, and Raspberry Ice Cream book by Matthias Kirschner from the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE). This tale of software, skateboards, and raspberry ice cream teaches kids how neat and exciting it is having control over your software, a perfect fun summer read!

- Reading is hard in the glaring sun, so shade your eyes with a freshly restocked GNU baseball cap in pitch black with brilliant gold embroidery. These are great for wearing anywhere, especially to free software events.

- For privacy, protect yourself from surveillance with ease and panache with this slick webcam guard.

We also hope you'll consider becoming an FSF associate member, putting yourself at the heart of our commitment to ensuring a world where all software respects our freedom and dignity. Plus, you'll help us reach our summer fundraising goal of 200 new associate members before July 11, and of course you'll also receive a 20% discount at the GNU Press Shop. A note about shipping: the GNU Press shop opens periodically, and we collect all orders during this time and schedule orders to be sent out on specific shipping dates with the help of volunteers. We will be doing the shipping at the end of the FSF's fundraiser, which means there will be a delay between placing your order and receiving it...

If you happen to be in the Boston area in July, and would like to support the FSF's work, we are looking for volunteers to help pack and ship our orders.
Also on sale are the book "Free as in Freedom 2.0" (Richard Stallman's 2010 revision of the 2002 biography by Sam Williams with extensive additional commentary) and "Free Software Free Society: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman" (the 3rd edition published in 2015).

And there's also several other books, t-shirts, other FSF-branded gear, and even a sticker that warns people "There is no cloud... just other people's computers."

Longtime Slashdot reader jrepin writes: Plasma is a popular desktop (and mobile) environment for GNU/Linux and other UNIX-like operating systems. Among other things, it also powers the desktop mode of the Steam Deck gaming handheld. The KDE community today announced the latest release: Plasma 6.4. This fresh new release improves on nearly every front, with progress being made in accessibility, color rendering, tablet support, window management, and more.

Plasma already offered virtual desktops and customizable tiles to help organize your windows and activities, and now it lets you choose a different configuration of tiles on each virtual desktop. The Wayland session brings some new accessibility features: you can now move the pointer using your keyboard's number pad keys, or use a three-finger touchpad pinch gesture to zoom in or out.

Plasma file transfer notification now shows a speed graph, giving you a more visual idea of how fast the transfer is going and how long it will take to complete. When any applications are in full screen mode Plasma will now enter Do Not Disturb mode and only show urgent notifications. When you exit full-screen mode, you'll see a summary of any notifications you missed.

Now, when an application tries to access the microphone and finds it muted, a notification will pop up. A new feature in the Application Launcher widget will place a green New! tag next to newly installed apps, so you can easily find where something you just installed lives in the menu.

The Display and Monitor page in System Settings comes with a brand new HDR calibration wizard. Support for Extended Dynamic Range (a different kind of HDR) and P010 video color format has also been added. System Monitor now supports usage monitoring for AMD and Intel graphic cards -- it can even show the GPU usage on a per-process basis.

Spectacle, the built-in app for taking screenshots and screen recordings, has a much-improved design and more streamlined functionality. The background of the desktop or window now darkens when an authentication dialog shows up, helping you locate and focus on the window asking for your password.

There's a brand-new Animations page in System Settings that groups all the settings for purely visual animated effects into one place, making them easier to find and configure. Aurorae, a newly added SVG vector graphics theme engine, enhances KWin window decorations.

You can read more about these and many other other features in the Plasma 6.4 announcement and complete changelog.

Linux user share on Steam rose to 2.69% in May 2025 -- the highest level recorded since at least 2018. GamingOnLinux reports: Overall user share for May 2025:

- Windows 95.45% -0.65%
- Linux 2.69% +0.42%
- macOS 1.85% +0.23%

Even with SteamOS 3 now being a little more widely available, the rise was not from SteamOS directly. Filtering to just the Linux numbers gives us these most popular distributions:

- SteamOS Holo 64 bit 30.95% -2.83%
- Arch Linux 64 bit 10.09% +0.64%
- Linux Mint 22.1 64 bit 7.76% +1.56%
- Freedesktop SDK 24.08 (Flatpak runtime) 64 bit 7.42% +1.01%
- Ubuntu Core 22 64 bit 4.63% +0.01%
- Ubuntu 24.04.2 LTS 64 bit 4.30% -0.14%
- CachyOS 64 bit 2.54% +2.54%
- EndeavourOS Linux 64 bit 2.44% -0.02%
- Manjaro Linux 64 bit 2.43% -0.18%
- Pop!_OS 22.04 LTS 64 bit 2.17% -0.06%
- Debian GNU/Linux 12 (bookworm) 64 bit 1.99% -0.28%
- Other 23.27% -2.27%

Thursday the Free Software Foundation announced plans for a celebratory hackathon in November to improve free/libre software "in honor of its fortieth anniversary.

The FSF has been campaigning for software freedom for over forty years. As part of its celebrations, the organization is inviting the wider free software community (both projects and individual contributors) to participate in a global, online hackathon to help improve important libre software projects.

All free software projects, regardless of affiliation or (free) license, are invited to participate. As of now, the advanced GNU/Linux distribution and package manager GNU Guix, the boot software distribution GNU Boot, the media publishing system MediaGoblin, and the Free Software Directory, the FSF's catalog of useful free software, have announced that they will submit a project. Interested contributors are encouraged to review the hackathon guidelines, which the FSF has made available online...

Hackathon contributions will be judged by a panel appointed by the FSF. The project and contributors making the most noteworthy contributions/patches will be given prizes by the Foundation. The hackathon will conclude with a closing ceremony.
"The FSF's free software hackathon will be held November 21-23, 2025," according to the announcement. "Submissions will be open until May 27."

"A modern free society has an obligation to offer electronic tax filing that respects user freedom," says a Free Software Foundation blog post, "and the United States is not excluded from this responsibility."

"Governments, and/or the companies that they partner with, are responsible for providing free as in freedom software for necessary operations, and tax filing is no exception." For many years now, a large portion of [U.S.] taxpayers have filed their taxes electronically through proprietary programs like TurboTax. Millions of taxpayers are led to believe that they have no other option than to use nonfree software or Service as a Software Substitute (SaaSS), giving up their freedom as well as their most private financial information to a third-party company, in order to file their taxes...

While the options for taxpayers have improved slightly with the IRS's implementation of the IRS Direct File program [in 25 states], this program unfortunately does require users to hand over their freedom when filing taxes.... Taxpayers shouldn't have to use a program that violates their individual freedoms to file legally required taxes. While Direct File is a step in the right direction as the program isn't in the hands of a third-party entity, it is still nonfree software. Because Direct File is a US government-operated program, and ongoing in the process of being deployed to twenty-five states, it's not too late to call on the IRS to make Direct File free software.

In the meantime, if you need to file US taxes and are yet to file, we suggest filing your taxes in a way that respects your user freedom as much as possible, such as through mailing tax forms. Like with other government interactions that snatch away user freedom, choose the path that most respects your freedom.
Free-as-in-freedom software would decrease the chance of user lock-in, the FSF points out. But they list several other advantages, including:

• Repairability: With free software, there is no uncertain wait period or reliance on a proprietary provider to make any needed bug or security fixes.

• Transparency: Unless you can check what a program really does (or ask someone in the free software community to check for you), there is no way to know that the program isn't doing things you don't consent to it doing.

• Cybersecurity: While free software isn't inherently more secure than nonfree software, it does have a tendency to be more secure because many developers can continuously improve the program and search for errors that can be exploited. With proprietary programs like TurboTax, taxpayers and the U.S. government are dependent on TurboTax to protect the sensitive financial and personal information of millions with few (if any) outside checks and balances...

• Taxpayer dollars spent should actually benefit the taxpayers: Taxpayer dollars should not be used to fund third-party programs that seek to control users and force them to use their programs through lobbying....

"We don't have to accept this unjust reality: we can work for a better future, together," the blog post concludes (offering a "sample message" U.S. taxpayers could send to IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel).

"Take action today and help make electronic tax filing free as in freedom for everyone."

In 30 minutes the Free Software Foundation holds a live auction of memorabilia to celebrate their upcoming 40th anniversary. "By moving out of the FSF office, we got to sort through all the fun and historically important memorabilia and selected the best ones," they announced earlier — and 25 items will up for bids. (To participate in the live auction, you must register in advance.)

"This is your chance to get your very own personal souvenir of the FSF," explains an 11-page auction booklet, "from original GNU art to a famous katana and the Internet Hall of Fame medal of the FSF's founder." That's right... a katana. Once upon a time, this 41-inch blade turned heads at the FSF's tech team office. Donated by FSF friends and fans of the XKCD webcomic #225, it became a lighthearted "weapon" in the war for user freedom. As RMS himself is anti-violence, he made a silly joke by examining the katana closely instead of brandishing it, symbolizing that software freedom can be defended with wit. In a legendary photo, this was perceived as if he sniffed the blade. Between the etched dragon on the scabbard and the wavy hamon on the blade, it's as flashy as it is symbolic — especially if you like taking on proprietary software with style (and a dash of humor).
The auction is intended "to entrust some of the historically important free software memorabilia that were in the FSF's office and archive to the free software community instead of locking them away in a storage unit where no one can enjoy them.

"Hopefully, this way some of these unique items will be displayed in galleries or on the walls of free software enthusiasts. All auction proceeds will go towards the FSF's mission to promote computer user freedom."

And speaking of user freedom, here's how they described the Internet Hall of Fame medal: When Richard M. Stallman, the founder of the FSF, was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame, it was the ultimate nod to free software's immense impact on the Internet... The medal is shiny, and the frame is fancy, but the real radiance is the recognition that the Internet might look much more locked down and dull without those original free software seeds. Hang it on your wall, and you'll be reminded that hacking for user freedom can change the world.

This week the Free Software Foundation published memorabilia items for an online silent auction — part of their big 40th anniversary celebration. "Starting March 17, the FSF will unlock items each day for bidding on the LibrePlanet wiki at 12:00 EDT.. Bidding on all items will conclude at 15:00 EDT on March 21, 2025...

"During the auction, the FSF welcomes everyone who supports user freedom to bid on historical and symbolic free software memorabilia," they annouced this week: The auction is split into two parts: a silent auction hosted on the LibrePlanet wiki from March 17 through March 21 and a live auction held on the FSF's Galène videoconferencing server on March 23 from 14:00-17:00. The auction is only the opening act to a months-long itinerary celebrating forty years of free software activism...

Executive director Zoë Kooyman adds: "These items are valuable pieces of FSF history, and some of them are emblematic of the free software movement. We want to entrust these memorabilia in the hands of the free software community for preservation and would love to see some of these items displayed in exhibitions." All in all, there are twenty-five pieces that are either directly part of the FSF's history and/or representative of the free software movement that will be available in the silent auction.

Winning bidders can rest assured that all proceeds from this auction will go towards the FSF's continued work to promote computer user freedom worldwide.
Silent auction items include:

• A print of the famous Gnu-with-Tux-as-superheroes poster signed by Richard Stallman and artist Lissanne Lake. Bids start at $300...

• A mid-1980s VT220 terminal that "still works, and can be connected to your favorite free machine over the serial interface... This is the same terminal that was on the FSF reception desk for some time, introducing visitors to ASCII art, NetHack, and other free software lore." Bids start at $250... (with estimate shipping costs of $100)

• An Amiga 3000UX donated to the GNU project "sometime in 1990." While it now has a damaged battery, "FSF staff programmers used it at MIT to help further some early development of the GNU operating system." Starting bid: $300 (with estimated shipping costs of $400).

• "A variety of plush animals that had greeted visitors at its former offices in Boston on 51 Franklin Street..."

"The most notable items have been reserved for the live auction on Sunday, March 23," they note — including the Internet Hall of Fame medal awarded to FSF founder Richard Stallman in 2013 "as ultimate recognition of free software's immense impact on the development and advancement of the Internet."

This week the Free Software Foundation "backed a lone developer's brave effort to overturn a pivotal court ruling that threatens to undermine the AGPLv3 — the foundation's GNU Affero General Public License, version 3," reports the Register.

"At stake is the future of not just the AGPLv3, but the FSF's widely used GNU Public License it is largely based on, and the software covered by those agreements." A core tenet of the GPL series is that free software remains free forever, and this is woven into the licenses' fine print. This ongoing legal battle is a matter of whether people can alter those licenses and redistribute code as they see fit in a non-free way, or if they must stick to the terms of an agreement that says the terms cannot be changed... If the Ninth Circuit upholds the [original district court] ruling, it's likely to create a binding precedent that would limit one of the major freedoms that AGPLv3 and other GPL licenses aim to protect — the ability to remove restrictions added to GPL licensed code.
"Neo4j appended an additional nonfree commercial restriction, the Commons Clause, to a verbatim version of the GNU AGPLv3 in a version of its software..." according to an FSF announcement this week. "The FSF's position on such confusing licensing practices has always been clear: the GNU licenses explicitly allow users to remove restrictions incompatible with the four freedoms." (You can read their amicus brief here.)

Thanks to Slashdot reader jms00 for sharing the news.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is set to review a California district court's ruling in Neo4j v. PureThink, which upheld Neo4j's right to modify the GNU AGPLv3 with additional binding terms. If the appellate court affirms this decision, it could set a precedent allowing licensors to impose unremovable restrictions on open-source software, potentially undermining the enforceability of GPL-based licenses and threatening the integrity of the open-source ecosystem. The Register reports: The GNU AGPLv3 is a free and open source software (FOSS) license largely based on the GNU GPLv3, both of which are published by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). Neo4j provided database software under the AGPLv3, then tweaked the license, leading to legal battles over forks of the software. The AGPLv3 includes language that says any added restrictions or requirements are removable, meaning someone could just file off Neo4j's changes to the usage and distribution license, reverting it back to the standard AGPLv3, which the biz has argued and successfully fought against in that California district court.

Now the matter, the validity of that modified FOSS license, is before an appeals court in the USA. "I don't think the community realizes that if the Ninth Circuit upholds the lower court's ruling, it won't just kill GPLv3," PureThink's John Mark Suhy told The Register. "It will create a dangerous legal precedent that could be used to undermine all open-source licenses, allowing licensors to impose unexpected restrictions and fundamentally eroding the trust that makes open source possible."

Perhaps equally concerning is the fact that Suhy, founder and CTO of PureThink and iGov (the two firms sued by Neo4j), and presently CTO of IT consultancy Greystones Group, is defending GPL licenses on his own, pro se, without the help of the FSF, founded by Richard Stallman, creator of the GNU General Public License. "I'm actually doing everything pro se because I used up all my savings to fight it in the lower court," said Suhy. "I'm surprised the Free Software Foundation didn't care too much about it. They always had an excuse about not having the money for it. Luckily the Software Freedom Conservancy came in and helped out there."

PAjamian writes: Two years ago Red Hat announced an end to its public source code availability. This caused a great deal of outcry from the Enterprise Linux community at large. Since then many have waited for a statement from the Free Software Foundation concerning their stance on the matter. Now, nearly two years later the FSF has finally responded to questions regarding their stance on the issue with the following statement:

When asked if the FSF would be willing to intervene on behalf of the community they had this to say:

Following is the full text of my original email to them and their response:

Subject: Statement about recent changes in source code distribution for Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Date: 2023-07-16 00:39:51

> Hi,
>
> I'm a user of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Rocky Linux and other Linux
> distributions in the RHEL ecosystem. I am also involved in the EL
> (Enterprise Linux) community which is being affected by the statements
> and changes in policy made by Red Hat at
> https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/furthering-evolution-centos-stream and
> https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/red-hats-commitment-open-source-
> response-gitcentosorg-changes
> (note there are many many more links and posts about this issue which
> I
> believe you are likely already aware of). While a few of these
> questions are answered more directly by the license FAQ some of them
> are
> not and there are a not insignificant number of people who would very
> much appreciate a public statement from the FSF that answers these
> questions directly.
>
> Can you please comment or release a statement about the Free Software
> Foundation's position on this issue? Specifically:
>

Thank you for writing in with your questions. My apologies for the delay, but we are a small team with limited resources and can be challenging keeping up with all the emails we receive.

Generally, we don't agree with what Red Hat is doing. Whether it constitutes a violation of the GPL would require legal analysis and the FSF does not give legal advice. However, as the stewards of the GNU GPL we can speak how it is intended to be applied and Red Hat's approach is certainly contrary to the spirit of the GPL. This is unfortunate, because we would expect such flagship organizations to drive the movement forward.

> Is Red Hat's removal of sources from git.centos.org a violation of the
> GPL and various other Free Software licenses for the various programs
> distributed under RHEL?
>
> Is Red Hat's distribution of source RPMs to their customers under
> their
> subscriber agreement sufficient to satisfy the above mentioned
> licenses?
>
> Is it a violation if Red Hat terminates a subscription early because
> their customer exercised their rights under the GPL and other Free
> Software licenses to redistribute the RHEL sources or create
> derivative
> works from them?
>
> Is it a violation if Red Hat refuses to renew a subscription that has
> expired because a customer exercised their rights to redistribute or
> create derivative works?
>
> A number of the programs distributed with RHEL are copyrighted by the
> FSF, some examples being bash, emacs, GNU core utilities, gcc, gnupg
> and
> glibc. Given that the FSF has standing to act in this matter would
> the
> FSF be willing to intervene on behalf of the community in order to get
> Red Hat to correct any of the above issues?
>

As of today, we are not aware of any issue with Red Hat's new policy that we could pursue on legal grounds. However, if you do find a violation, please [follow these instructions][0] and send a report to <license-violation@gnu.org>.

[0]: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-violation.html

If you are interested in something more specific on this, the Software Freedom Conservancy [published an article about the RHEL][1] situation and hosted a [panel at their conference in 2023][2]. These cover the situation fairly thoroughly.

[1]: https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/jun/23/rhel-gpl-analysis/
[2]: https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2023/jul/19/rhel-panel-fossy-2023/