Mise à jour de la base de données, veuillez patienter...

The FSF was selected as one of the 10! We were 8th on the list, just behind National Public Radio.

We received the news while I was meeting with our awesome technical team, hammering out our priorities for the next week and discussing the details of how we'll stream the upcoming LibrePlanet conference using exclusively free software. Our collective jaws dropped.

Thank you!

It is an honor to receive such a strong endorsement—and such trust—from the reddit community. It's also a responsibility, and we will use the money wisely.

As one of the smallest charities on the list, our staff of 13 works incredibly hard to win back your freedom as computer users; getting us closer to a world where all of what we need to do on all of our computers can be done, and done safely, using only free "as in freedom" software.

Since we are driven primarily by contributions from individuals (they were about 80% of the $1.02 million in support we received last fiscal year), this amount will make reddit one of our largest donors this year, right up there with TowardEX and the Markley Group, who generously donate just about all of our bandwidth and colocation space.

As this year is the FSF's 30th anniversary, we had set an ambitious goal of $525,000 for our winter fundraiser, which ended January 31st. We came up a bit shy then—but with this donation, we have actually exceeded that goal.

Thank you all for making this year extra-special for us! Now it's time to see how much more we can do for you.

Register now to join the free software community at LibrePlanet 2015.

If you register by Monday, March 9th, you'll be able to pick up a spiffy LibrePlanet 2015 t-shirt. And don't forget that FSF members get gratis admission—and help support free software year-round!

Read on if you'd like more information about volunteering, child care reimbursements, the program, the LibrePlanet email discussion list, or participating remotely.

Volunteering (get gratis admission!)

Volunteers are crucial to LibrePlanet, and we need more to make this year awesome. Give two hours or more of your time and you'll get gratis admission, a LibrePlanet t-shirt, and lunch. You'll choose from a wide variety of tasks including A/V and livestreaming management, visitor services, and speaker support. Get started by telling us your skills and interests through the quick volunteer application.

Child care reimbursements

We're happy to offer childcare reimbursements, so that you can come to LibrePlanet even if you've got young hackers at home. To apply or find out more, contact campaigns@fsf.org no later than Friday, March 6th.

Program

The program is up, so you can start thinking about which sessions you'd like to attend. This year's conference will be jam packed with great talks like "Fighting surveillance with a free, distributed, and federated net," "Style or substance? Free software is totally the 80's," and "Free software at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences." Make sure you check out the social events, including the Friday night 30th Anniversary Open House—check the website for more details.

LibrePlanet starts on the list

Looking to coordinate travel with other LibrePlanet attendees? Brainstorm ideas for lightning talks? Organize a get-together after the conference? Join the libreplanet-discuss email list to connect with other LibrePlanet attendees. The list is active year-round as part of the libreplanet.org community.

Participating remotely

Even if you can't make it to Cambridge, you can still participate in LibrePlanet! We'll be livestreaming the conference and hosting an online discussion in real time, then posting all the session recordings online after the conference. Bookmark the remote participation page now: libreplanet.org/2015/live.

That's all for now! Hope to see you at LibrePlanet.

The basis of the problem is a program by Superfish that is designed to interject advertisements into users' Web browsing. That's irritating, but it gets worse. Superfish also installs a certificate that intercepts Web traffic and cripples the host computer's ability to use HTTPS to validate the authenticity of Web sites. This leaves an open door for attackers to use fake versions of sites that should be secure -- like bank Web sites -- to steal personal information. You can read more about the vulnerability at Ars Technica.

Whenever you use proprietary software like Windows or Superfish, true, trustable, verifiable security is always out of reach. Because proprietary code can't be publicly inspected, there's no way to validate its security. Users have to trust that the code is safe and works as advertised. Since proprietary code can only be modified by the developers who claim to own it, users are powerless to choose the manner in which security bugs are fixed. With proprietary software, user security is secondary to developer control.

Recent high-profile security vulnerabilities in free software, like Heartbleed and POODLE, were created when well-intentioned developers made mistakes that were difficult to detect. But this is different -- Lenovo and Superfish caused a massive security breach for the sake of expedience in generating ad revenue.

These companies have shown such blatant disregard for the public trust that they will have to work hard to restore it. Lenovo should work with a third party committed to the public interest -- like the Free Software Foundation -- to create and sell laptops that are certified to respect user freedom and come with a preinstalled free operating system. Join us in calling for this change on social media (see our recommendations for social media platforms).

Regardless of what Lenovo does, you can minimize your risk of exposure to Superfish and similar threats by uninstalling proprietary operating systems and using a free GNU/Linux distribution signed by a source you trust. If you are interested in a new computer, the FSF currently certifies two retail laptops that come with no proprietary software through our Respects Your Freedom program, and you can build your own free software-friendly computer with guidance from the community-maintained hardware database h-node.

If you have used a Lenovo computer running Superfish, make sure to reset any passwords you use on the Web, as they may have been intercepted.

Join the FSF and friends on Friday, February 20, from 2pm to 5pm EST (19:00 to 22:00 UTC) to help improve the Free Software Directory by adding new entries and updating existing ones. We will be on IRC in the #fsf channel on freenode.

Tens of thousands of people visit directory.fsf.org each month to discover free software. Each entry in the Directory contains a wealth of useful information, from basic category and descriptions, to providing detailed info about version control, IRC channels, documentation, and licensing info that has been carefully checked by FSF staff and trained volunteers.

While the Free Software Directory has been and continues to be a great resource to the world over the past decade, it has the potential of being a resource of even greater value. But it needs your help!

If you are eager to help and you can't wait or are simply unable to make it onto IRC on Friday, our participation guide will provide you with all the information you need to get started on helping the Directory today!

We have updated our list of Various Licenses and Comments about Them to include the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license (CC BY 4.0) and the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license (CC BY-SA 4.0). Both of these licenses are free licenses for works of practical use besides software and documentation.

CC BY 4.0 is a noncopyleft license that is compatible with the GNU General Public License version 3.0 (GPLv3), meaning you can combine a CC BY 4.0 licensed work with a GPLv3 licensed work a larger work that is then released under the terms of GPLv3.

Creative Commons has begun a public discussion process for license compatibility evaluation in order to determine whether or not GPLv3 should be added to the list of CC BY-SA 4.0 Compatible Licenses. If GPLv3 is added to this list, then CC BY-SA 4.0 will be deemed one-way compatible with GPLv3, which means that a person can adapt a CC BY-SA 4.0 licensed work and release the adapted version under the terms of GPLv3.

Throughout the drafting process of both of these licenses, the FSF, with the help of the Software Freedom Law Center, provided feedback and suggestions to Creative Commons. We thank Creative Commons for giving us the opportunity to provide feedback and for incorporating many of our suggestions.

The FSF will continue to provide feedback throughout the current compatibility evaluation discussion process. We will also make updates to our list when have new information regarding compatibility between these CC licenses and other GNU licenses, such as GNU GPLv2 and the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL).