The pace and demands of modern life pressure us to carry computers in our pockets laden with nonfree software (our cell phones), and new threats to our privacy are popping up on every street corner, via proprietary Amazon Ring cameras, and on many kitchen counters, via “smart” home devices. Back when our movement was born, software freedom was only of great concern to people who were actively involved in development. Today, nobody in the world can afford to ignore the crucial importance of knowing what our software is doing, and keeping it from doing us harm.

As the battles and triumphs of 2019 fade into the past and the new challenges of 2020 emerge, the Free Software Foundation (FSF) continues our commitment to the goal we’ve had from our earliest days: a future in which all software is free, and can be trusted to serve the needs and best interests of every user. Our strength depends on your support: we need you to boldly carry the message and goal of software freedom to everyone you know, bring them into the fold, and help us mobilize them to use and talk about free software.

That's why the central message of our fall/winter fundraiser has been membership: because our associate members are the most committed fighters for the cause of software freedom, pledging not just financial support but also a vote of confidence. This is your final chance to help us reach our goal of 600 new members by the end of 2019 (and your last chance for a tax deduction if you're in the US), so today is the day to join the FSF! The numbers matter, and FSF membership is a very powerful gesture to make for only $10 a month ($5 if you are a student).

As a special bonus, all new and renewing annual associate members ($120+) can choose to receive one of our exclusive year-end gifts. If you get a minimum of three people to mention you as a referral, you can get the gifts, too!

While financial support is a must, using your voice to boost our movement is an equally important role for every member and supporter. We're behind on our new membership goal for this fundraiser period, so please help us get the word out today! You can expand our reach by sharing our posts on social media, sharing our articles via email, and talking to your friends, family, and coworkers about why free software should matter to them. We've prepared some images as fun conversation starters you can share: use the hashtag #ISupportFreeSoftware and help them spread!

We’re spending the end of this year making plans to make 2020 the best year for the FSF ever: you can read about some of these plans in the reports from our tech team, licensing and compliance team, and campaigns team. Will this be the year that we make user freedom a kitchen table issue? We’ll never stop trying – and we hope you’ll be by our side all the way.

2019 has been an eye-opening, transformative year for free software and the Free Software Foundation (FSF), bringing some major changes both internally and in the world around us. As we navigate these changes, we are guided by the FSF's founding vision -- the four freedoms that define free software, and our mission to make all software be compatible with human freedom. It must be honest, transparent, and shareable, and it must truly work in service of its users.

For the last sixteen years, I have been steeped in these principles, and along with so many of you, have absorbed them into my heart and soul. Thank you for being a member of this community, for your advocacy and code and commitment. It is your support that has put us in a position to be able to face new challenges, and to continue evolving into an organization that can last for as long as the work still needs to be done.

Over the last month and a half, we've been sharing highlights of the work our campaigns, licensing, tech, and operations team have done in 2019. We don't have a full-time position dedicated to fundraising, so you've heard these details directly from the people doing the work. I'm proud of what our teams have accomplished this year with your support: huge steps forward for the Respects Your Freedom product certification program, significant updates to the infrastructure we provide for thousands of free software developers and users worldwide, an impactful International Day Against Digital Restrictions Management, a successful pilot program to teach public school students about free software, and of course our new ShoeTool video. Our intense focus on program work earned us another 4-star top rating from Charity Navigator.

Author and activist Cory Doctorow said recently of the FSF, "You interact with code that they made possible a million times a day, and they never stop working to make sure that the code stays free." We need your help now to be able to continue this work. But we can't stop there. We need to take the free software vision much further in 2020. We have to be better in the areas of mobile devices, network services, software-driven cars, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.

Most of all, we need to do better at communicating and spreading the free software vision in different ways so that others, from all walks of life, will join us in tackling these problems. This means building a stronger, kinder, more united, and powerful community.

We are behind on our goal of welcoming 600 new associate members by December 31st. But I know we can still reach that goal. In my sixteen years, I have seen single individuals inspire a dozen people to join in a week. Please join us in our final year-end push by becoming a member or renewing your membership? Show your friends, family, and colleagues the ShoeTool video, and explain to them the reasons you support free software. We'll even send you a special thank-you gift if you convince just three others -- email campaigns@fsf.org and let us know who they are.

Thank you for everything you've done for free software, and for believing in us to carry the vision forward into 2020.

• artanis-0.4.1
• bison-3.5
• gama-2.08
• global-6.6.4
• gnuhealth-3.6.5
• gnunet-0.12.1
• gnupg-2.2.19
• libcdio-10.2+2.0.1
• libmicrohttpd-0.9.69
• libredwg-0.9.3
• nano-4.7
• parallel-20191222
• taler-0.6.0
• vc-dwim-1.9

For announcements of most new GNU releases, subscribe to the info-gnu mailing list: https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/info-gnu.

To download: nearly all GNU software is available from https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/, or preferably one of its mirrors from https://www.gnu.org/prep/ftp.html. You can use the URL https://ftpmirror.gnu.org/ to be automatically redirected to a (hopefully) nearby and up-to-date mirror.

This month, we welcome Martin Schanzenbach as comaintainer of GNUnet.

A number of GNU packages, as well as the GNU operating system as a whole, are looking for maintainers and other assistance: please see https://www.gnu.org/server/takeaction.html#unmaint if you'd like to help. The general page on how to help GNU is at https://www.gnu.org/help/help.html.

If you have a working or partly working program that you'd like to offer to the GNU project as a GNU package, see https://www.gnu.org/help/evaluation.html.

As always, please feel free to write to us at maintainers@gnu.org with any GNUish questions or suggestions for future installments.

ShoeTool is an animated fairy tale about an elf shoemaker who thinks he buys a machine to help him make shoes... only to find out that there are there are strings attached to his "purchase." Please show your support for free software and this video by promoting it on your social media using the #shoetool hashtag.

Here's a short URL you can use: https://u.fsf.org/shoetool

Software restrictions, analogous to the kinds of restrictions our main character Wendell runs into as a user of the promising ShoeTool, are detrimental to our freedom, creativity, and jobs. We hope watching Wendell's frustrations will shake things up in many homes and help more people understand.

People have been looking to the FSF for almost thirty-five years for leadership, positive innovation, and being the uncompromising defender of free software. We want to keep producing high quality visuals that are informative and engaging, but they cost money. This is the biggest fundraising time of the year, and we still have a long way to go if we are to meet our goal of 600 new associate members. Make a donation or become a member today.

Wishing everyone a happy holiday and a liberated 2020!

Sincerely,

The Free Software Foundation
Zoë, Andrew, Craig, Dana, Dawn, Donald, Greg, Ian, Jeanne, John H., John S., Matt, Michael, and Ruben

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Download the video:

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• Source files: Source Files
  

Subtitles and translations

Help us translate to many different languages so we can share this video across the globe! Translation drafts and the how-to explanation can be found on our wiki. Once you have finalized a translation, email campaigns@fsf.org and we will make it available on the Web site.

Subtitle files: English

Embed ShoeTool on your site or blog with this code:

<video style="width: 100%; max-width: 640px;" controls="controls" poster="https://static.fsf.org/nosvn/videos/fsf-shoetool/thumbnails/ShoeTool-Cover-1.jpg" crossorigin="anonymous"><source src="./media/71106e3b.fsf-shoetool-720p.mp4" data-original-source="https://static.fsf.org/nosvn/videos/fsf-shoetool/fsf-shoetool-720p.mp4" type="video/mp4" /><track kind="subtitles" label="English" srclang="en" src="https://static.fsf.org/nosvn/videos/fsf-shoetool/captions/shoetoolfsf_en.vtt" default="default" /></video>

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Video credits:

ShoeTool by the Free Software Foundation
LENGTH: 02:05
PRODUCER & DIRECTOR: Brad Burkhart
STORY: Douglas J. Eboch

ShoeTool by the Free Software Foundation Copyright © 2019 is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Many if not most people have come to the conclusion that the song "Every Breath You Take" is creepy and inappropriate: Every step you take / Every move you make / Every bond you break / Every step you take / I'll be watching you isn't very reassuring, much less romantic. Yet for many years, we've been completely fine with kids learning that Santa Claus sees you when you're sleeping / He knows when you're awake / He knows if you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake.

As noted by writer Matt Beard in The Guardian, the latest iteration of teaching kids to accept constant surveillance via holiday tradition is the Elf on the Shelf, a cheerful little snitch whom parents hide in different spots every day in the house. The idea is, the Elf watches what kids are up to, and if they call their little sister a name or steal a cookie from the cookie jar, the friendly household spy will tattle to Santa, who will add them to the "naughty" list. Beware! We agree with Beard that this cutesy, innocent-seeming "tradition" (which actually only dates back to 2005!) communicates to children that someone is always watching them, and that moreover, this is a perfectly normal thing. This should give us pause, and cause us to think carefully about what kind of messages we are sending in our behavior at home and with friends.

This resonates with us not just because surveillance and privacy are obviously important free software issues, but because kids are little sponges who soak up our values from day one, and thus it's important to communicate clearly. This is why, although it's extraordinarily difficult to live in complete software freedom, we want to think about every concession to the proprietary world we make, and make sure that kids know that being forced to make those concessions is unfair. When we reject services that try to make us submit to Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) to watch our favorite movies, then we should explain why it's bad; we can also endeavor to use the services in the Guide to DRM-Free Living instead, and explain why they're better. At the center of the free software philosophy is a fundamental respect for human dignity and individual rights, as well as our responsibility to our community, and no matter how much we might want to use a shortcut to get kids to behave well, ultimately it sends the message that stomping on their right to privacy is okay today -- and will be okay tomorrow when they're grown up, too.

Likewise, we want to communicate our values clearly to the other people in our lives. Because during the holidays many of us spend a lot of time with family, this is an important opportunity to talk about why we don't want the grownup equivalent of the Elf on the Shelf in our homes: "smart" devices like the Amazon Ring, the Google Home, and other items that grant us some useful capabilities while stealing away our right to privacy. It's quite possible that you're the kind of free software activist who is carefully stacking up small refusals to trade freedom for convenience (having trouble using WiFi on your phone or laptop because of proprietary software, or planning your travel carefully to avoid using proprietary ridesharing apps), and it's also quite likely that you're going to wind up spending some time this holiday in the home of someone whose "smart" devices will be spying on your conversations without your permission, and likely without your knowledge!

So this holiday, it's good to think about why free software matters, and communicate that to someone you care about -- whether it's your own child, or your parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, or circle of best friends. You can tell them about why you don't want an Amazon Echo or a Nintendo Switch, or any other user-hostile device, and explain why, and also explain why having that Echo in their own home is not only disrespecting their own rights, but yours as well. You can also use our Ethical Tech Giving Guide to select gifts that fit your family's needs. Even better, you could show your support of user freedom by giving as associate membership to the FSF in place of a physical gift to a friend or family member. Even if they have yet to hear about us, make sure your gift is one that respects their freedom, and by extension, the freedom of us all.