Every week free software activists from around the world come together in #fsf on irc.freenode.org to help improve the Free Software Directory. This recaps the work we accomplished on the Friday, November 11th, 2016 meeting.

Last week was a live meeting at the Seattle GNU/Linux Conference. Iankelling and donaldr3 were joined by helpful attendees in checking whether their favorite free software packages were already included in the directory. While the directory is very robust these days, most packages suggested were actually already included, there were a few new entries added. It was just a great opportunity to meet with people who weren't already involved in the directory and to help them get involved by learning about the project.

On the channel, there was also a long discussion about updating the requirements for the directory. The channel discussed two different scenarios which we have name 'bait and surrender' and 'freedom betrayed'. In 'bait and surrender', a developer offers an inferior free software version of their work in attempt to get users to surrender their freedom and switch to a more fully featured proprietary version. In 'freedom betrayed', a formerly free software project changes to a proprietary license. In both cases, we want to make clear to users that while there may be a free software version available that they have to be wary of the project, and understand that there are proprietary versions. The channel came up with a proposal to tag these different situations, which is now being discussed on the mailing list.

The meeting concluded with deciding that the next meeting should focus on contacting maintainers to help them include their packages on the directory or keep their entries up to date.

If you would like to help update the directory, meet with us every Friday in #fsf on irc.freenode.org from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. EST (18:00 to 20:00 UTC).