We are pleased to announce that registration for LibrePlanet is now open. Students and FSF members attend LibrePlanet gratis. Not a member? Join today to register gratis, or register at our non-member rate.

The conference will be held March 19-20, 2016, in the Boston area -- this year's theme is "Fork the System." Talks at this year's conference will touch on how free software creates the opportunity of a new path for its users, allows developers to fight the restrictions of a system dominated by proprietary software by creating free replacements, and is the foundation of a philosophy of freedom, sharing, and change.

Want to speak at LibrePlanet?

You have just a few weeks left to submit a session proposal -- the deadline is November 16th, 2016 at 15:00 UTC (10:00 EST).

Do you have questions about what makes a strong proposal? We're hosting an information session to answer any questions you have about submitting a proposal for LibrePlanet on Tuesday, November 3rd from 19:00 - 22:00 UTC (14:00 - 17:00 EST). Join us in the #libreplanet IRC channel on freenode. Don't use IRC? Email your questions to campaigns@fsf.org.

Need help traveling to LibrePlanet?

We have a limited amount of funding to bring conference participants to LibrePlanet from all around the world. You can apply for a scholarship starting now -- the application deadline is Monday, December 1st, 2016 at 15:00 UTC (10:00 EST in the morning). Scholarship recipients will be notified in mid-December.

If you don't need a scholarship, you can help us welcome all types of people to LibrePlanet 2016 by making a contribution to the conference's scholarship fund now, or when you register for LibrePlanet. A donation of $50 covers one night in a shared Boston-area hotel room, but any amount helps.

LibrePlanet is an inspiring, creative gathering where you'll meet activists, students, developers, and leaders -- and you may get involved in a new project, gain new energy for free software activism, and make new friends. You definitely want to be in the Boston area on March 19-20, 2016 for LibrePlanet 2016.

First, watch this video of FSF general counsel and Software Freedom Law Center President and Executive Director Eben Moglen's talk, "FSF from 30 to 45," given at the User Freedom Summit held at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA. Moglen looks ahead to the crucial issues facing the free software movement in its next fifteen years.

At the 30th anniversary party held in Boston, we had two recorded greetings from friends of the FSF who were unable to attend in person. One was by FSF member, BoingBoing co-editor, and EFF fellow Cory Doctorow. The other greeting was from computer scientist and science fiction writer Vernor Vinge.

Check out the video of the performance of the Free Software Song and the Bulgarian folk song that inspired it, Sadi Moma Bela Loza, by members of the Boston Bulgarian singing groups Divi Zheni and Zornitsa. We will have more videos of other guest toasts and RMS's address soon.

Across the world, the Free Software Foundation Europe held a party with a beautiful cake and balloons with the FSF30 logo. Read FSFE Vice President Matthias Kirschner's post about the 30th anniversary.

Ohio GNU/LinuxFest broadcast a stream of the Boston party proceedings for attendees. They also made an awesome cake:

More than two-thirds of the FSF's funding comes from individuals like you. We rely on the free software community's generosity, and there are many ways to give. If you haven't already, will you consider giving $30 to celebrate thirty years of the FSF? You can also support the FSF by buying a copy of the third edition of Richard Stallman's essay collection, Free Software, Free Society, which is now available in hardcover and paperback, or a commemorative FSF30 t-shirt.

Again, thanks for celebrating thirty years of the Free Software Foundation.

In today's Friday Free Software Directory IRC Meeting we discussed the challenges of listing FPGA software and created a page to document some of these challenges. We discussed that when adding JavaScript programs, we should consider filing bug/feature requests to the projects asking them to use our recommended conventions for labelling license info in JS files.

In addition to approving updates to several entries, we also published and approved two new entries:

• CubicSDR, a Software-Defined Radio application which allows you to navigate the radio spectrum
• Shaoli, an AGPLv3'd software program built on Django that can be used to manage finances and as a basis for crowdfunding site development.

I had a great time at the Summit and I wanted to share some of my thoughts and experiences with the free software community.

We really, really appreciate the existence of a high-quality free CRM

Me with Dave Greenberg of CiviCRM's core team.

Before CiviCRM existed, the FSF had a listing in our High Priority Projects list calling for someone to develop a free CRM. In 2010, we started using CiviCRM, checked the CRM entry off the list and issued a call for other nonprofits to join us in using CiviCRM. Last year, we had the opportunity to work with the free software development firm Zyxware to create the CiviWCI extension, which makes beautiful progress bars and widgets for fundraising campaigns.

CiviCRM is a key part of the free software movement, but it requires continued financial and technical contributions to stay that way and keep improving. The FSF is a proud organizational member of the CiviCRM project, and we hope that other organizations that use it join us.

Nonprofits using CiviCRM are in a great position to educate about free software

The conference wasn't just attended by tech folks who hack on CiviCRM or administer it -- actually, the largest group was people from nonprofits in non-technology fields: the focus on service dogs for the disabled, clean energy, church organizing, and more. These diverse organizations are happily using CiviCRM instead of a proprietary CRM, but most hadn't yet been introduced to the ethical and political ideas behind free software and computer user freedom.

I got to provide that introduction in my presentation during the conference's final plenary session. I did my best to share free software's rich history and seminal philosophical ideas, and I asked the attendees to teach their constituents about free software, leveraging their connection to CiviCRM. Since their community is already interacting with an organization they appreciate through CiviCRM, they're more likely to see why free software is important. Here are some messages I shared at the Summit, which could be useful for some nonprofits to explain why they use free software:

• Our organization is part of a community -- we give back by submitting bug reports and code, which helps other nonprofits.
• Our organization is thoughtful and ethical about how we operate, and this extends to the technology we use.
• Our organization is part of a political movement for technological empowerment, transparency, and freedom.
• Our organization avoids spending money on proprietary software licenses so that we can focus on our mission.
• Our organization keeps your data safe in a system we can service ourselves instead of leaving it in a black box computer controlled by someone else (if you host your own CiviCRM instance).

If you work for a nonprofit or other mission-based organization that uses free software and you're interested in introducing your followers to our movement, I'd be more than happy to help you find the way that works best for your community -- send me an email at campaigns@fsf.org. If you have suggestions about improving the messages above or for new ones, I would love to hear those as well.

Yes, you can make a living with free software

One of the most satisfying aspects of the conference was getting to spend time surrounded by people who make their livings developing and administering free software. As an FSFer, I know plenty of people like this, but I'm rarely in an environment where it's the norm. People often try to insist that developers can't support themselves developing free software, but it's not true -- there are people who do it and I know them and they're awesome.

CiviCRM is a free software success story, and it's become an integral to our work at the FSF. We're thankful to everyone who also works on it, submitting bug reports, programming, testing, and translating. We look forward to being part of its community for many years to come, and using it to win more victories for free software.

Lady Ada King, Countess of Lovelace, was a 19th-century English mathematician who many consider the first programmer, because she published the most complete and in-depth description of the Analytical Engine, an early computer conceived of -- but never built -- by Charles Babbage. This year, to honor Ada Lovelace's legacy, we want to tell you more about Marina Zhurakhinskaya and Outreachy.

Marina Zhurakhinskaya and Karen Sandler, co-organizers of OPW (now Outreachy), with Richard Stallman, accepting the 2014 Free Software Award for Projects of Social Benefit for OPW.

Marina is an engineer -- she has worked at Red Hat for nearly a decade, and her work currently focuses on community diversity and inclusion. She also works with Outreachy, an internship program that aims to bring underrepresented groups into the free software community, which received the Free Software Foundation's Award for Free Software Projects of Social Benefit in 2014, under its previous name, the Outreach Program for Women.

Outreachy offers mentored, remote internships in free software. Participating projects include GNOME, Wikimedia, and Mozilla. Since 2010, the program has had nearly 250 participants, many of whom have moved on to jobs in tech, conference presentations, and giving back to the program by becoming mentors. We conducted an email interview with Marina to tell us a bit more.

Talk about your new role as senior outreach specialist of community diversity and inclusion at Red Hat. How did your own experience in the tech industry influence your career track at Red Hat? And how did you become involved with Outreachy (formerly the Outreach Program for Women)?

Working as a senior software engineer at Red Hat on the GNOME Project, I was very impressed by the talent of the project contributors, by how rewarding it is to work on free software, and by the feeling of connectedness one gets when collaborating with people all over the world. Yet, at GUADEC 2009, of approximately 170 attendees, I believe I was one of only eight women. Of the software developers working on the entire GNOME project at the time, I was one of only three.

Shortly after that GUADEC, the GNOME Foundation board of directors asked if I would be willing to lead an outreach effort for GNOME aimed at bringing women into the community and mentoring participants. I also got an invitation to participate in the Free Software Foundation's Women's Caucus and later attended the Women in Free Software track at LibrePlanet 2010. These events allowed me to learn about the efforts that already had taken place in free software to increase participation by women and allowed me to make connections with other people passionate about this topic. I created the Outreach Program for Women with the help and support of Stormy Peters – then GNOME Foundation executive director. Later, the next GNOME Foundation executive director, Karen Sandler, helped expand the program beyond GNOME to include many free software communities.

As the Outreach Program for Women grew, I switched to a role of community engagement lead at Red Hat, combining GNOME community management and coordination of the program. At the same time, I was gaining more experience in diversity by following the resources created by the Ada Initiative and others who wrote about diversity issues, attending AdaCamps, and later joining the board of advisors and board of directors for the Ada Initiative. In 2015, as coordinators of Outreach Program for Women, Karen Sandler and I have led the work to rename it to Outreachy, move it to Software Freedom Conservancy as its new organizational home, and, with the help of four new coordinators, expand it to be open to people of color underrepresented in tech in the U.S., while continuing to be open to cis and trans women, trans men, and genderqueer people worldwide.

The vast potential to empower more people from diverse backgrounds through participation in free software and to make our community stronger with more contributors motivated me to seek a full-time position focused on free software community diversity and inclusion. My senior outreach specialist role at Red Hat involves co-organizing Outreachy and providing support for Red Hatters who are looking to make their communities and teams more diverse and inclusive. At the core of this role is a recognition that while we need participation from all engineers as mentors and allies for diversity efforts, we should not primarily rely on minority engineers to take on the work of organizing these efforts or developing expertise on the issue, as this is an excessive burden. A major component of the role is organizing structured and meaningful opportunities to be mentors for all engineers, that draw on people's specialized skills, help them grow professionally, and only require a manageable time commitment from them.

How has winning a Free Software Award for Projects of Social Benefit in 2014 impacted Outreachy?

Winning a Free Software Award for Projects of Social Benefit was a very proud moment for Outreachy. It showed that the free software community valued and supported the effort to bring in more people from diverse backgrounds. It shone a light on the program and increased its recognition. Since then, such important communities as the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team and X.Org have joined Outreachy.

I am also thankful to the Free Software Foundation for being a long-time sponsor of Outreachy.

Outreachy's scope has continued to expand: what's the latest?

The diversity data for the U.S. released by many tech companies shows that many of them only have 1-3% Black and 2-4% Hispanic employees in technical roles. The population of the U.S. is 13% Black and 17% Hispanic. We don't have any data like this for free software participation, but we can tell there is a lack of racial and ethnic diversity at conferences we attend.

For the upcoming December round, the program has expanded to be open to residents and nationals of the U.S. of any gender who are Black/African American, Hispanic/Latina, American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander. It continues to be open to cis and trans women, trans men, and genderqueer people worldwide.

Cindy Pallares, Tony Sebro, and Bryan Smith joined Karen Sandler, Sarah Sharp, and me as Outreachy coordinators. With their experience as African American and Latina free software professionals and with the disparity shown by the diversity data, we knew that the targeted expansion to people of color underrepresented in U.S. tech was an appropriate next step for Outreachy. We know there are many other groups of people and parts of the world underrepresented in free software. While we expect it to take several rounds for us to manage the growth that will come with this expansion, we welcome input on what populations we should consider reaching out to next.

People in free software work really hard to make their projects successful and recognizing them for their work shows the appreciation we have for it. Nominating a person or a project for a Free Software Award can help bring more attention to their mission and share with the world an inspiring free software success story. Finally, the recipients will enjoy attending LibrePlanet – a fantastic conference – and receiving their award from Richard Stallman as hundreds of free software enthusiasts cheer.

What are your hopes for the free software community in the next thirty years?

I hope that more developers and other technology contributors seek out opportunities to work on free software as their job. I would like to see more business, entrepreneurial, non-profit, academic, and government organizational infrastructure for free software development. In particular, all software developed or purchased with public funds should be free software. I would like to see free software in mainstream critical devices, such as medical and automotive, and in modern consumer products, such as mobile phones. Free software solutions need to offer a compelling user experience, so that people opt for them without having to compromise convenience. These compelling solutions will also help spread the message of software freedom. I hope that moving to free software as a default from the developer and consumer perspective, will incentivize existing companies to open the code of their core services and to allow verification and decentralization of them. Finally, I hope that free software contributors and enthusiasts will come from a variety of diverse backgrounds, and we will either no longer need Outreachy or will dramatically change who it's targeted toward.

To get us there, it's vital that free software supporters donate to organizations like the Free Software Foundation, Software Freedom Conservancy, the GNOME Foundation, and others that are advocating for free software and providing organizational structure to free software projects we all know and love.

The application deadline for the upcoming round of Outreachy internships is November 2, and the internship dates will be from December 7 to March 7. Now is a great time to learn about the participating communities, work on the required contribution with the help of a mentor, and apply. You can encourage others to apply by using the prepared e-mail message, social network updates, and the flyer. You can get your company to sponsor Outreachy or make an individual donation to help it grow and fund more internships.

Thanks to Marina Zhurakhinskaya for this in-depth conversation. Please help us recognize standouts in the free software community: To nominate an individual for the Award for the Advancement of Free Software or a project for the Award for Projects of Social Benefit, send your nomination along with a description of the project or individual to award-nominations@gnu.org by November 1st, 2015. Apply here to present a session at the next LibrePlanet, which will take place March 19-20, 2016, in the Boston area -- submissions are due November 16, 2015, at 15:00 UTC. To read more about more women in free software, check out our previous Ada Lovelace Day posts from 2014, 2013, 2012, and 2011.

Sincerely,

Georgia Young Program Manager

You can view this post on the Web at https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/ada-lovelace-day-2015.