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/

The Free Software Foundation "hinted that it would organize an unprecedented virtual memorabilia auction" in March to celebrate this year's 40th anniversary, according to an announcement this week. Those hints "left collectors and free software fans wondering which of the pieces of the FSF's history would be auctioned off."

But Tuesday the FSF "lifted the veil and gave a sneak peak of some of the more prestigious entries in the memorabilia auction." First of all, the memorabilia auction will feature an item that could be especially interesting for art collectors but will certainly also draw the attention of free software fans from all over: the original GNU head drawing by Etienne Suvasa, which became the blueprint for the iconic GNU logo present everywhere in the free software world.

The list of memorabilia for sale also entails some rare and historic hardware, such as a "terminus-est" microcomputer, and an Amiga 3000UX that was used in the FSF's old office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the early days of GNU, when these machines were capable of running a GNU-like operating system. Another meaningful item to be auctioned off, and one that collectors will want to keep a keen eye on, is the Internet Hall of Fame medal awarded to founder Richard Stallman. When Stallman was inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame, it was the ultimate recognition of free software's immense impact on the development and advancement of the Internet. This medal is definitely worthy of joining a fine historical collection...! [T]here are several more historic awards, more original GNU artwork, and a legendary katana [as seen in an XKCD comic] that became a lighthearted weapon in the fight for computer user freedom.

The auction is only the opening act to a whole agenda of activities celebrating forty years of free software activism. In May, the FSF invites free software supporters all over the world to gather for local in-person community meetups to network, discuss what people can do next to make the world freer, and celebrate forty years of commitment to software freedom. Then, on the actual birthday of the FSF on October 4, 2025, the organization intends to bring the international free software community to Boston for a celebration featuring keynotes and workshops by prominent personalities of the free software movement.
"The bidding will start as a virtual silent auction on March 17 and run through March 21, with more auction items revealed each day, and will culminate in an virtual live auction on March 23, 2025, 14:00 to 17:00 EDT," according to the announcement.

"Register here to attend the live auction. There's no need to register for the silent auction; you can simply join the bidding on the FSF's LibrePlanet wiki."

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: What exactly is wrong with the batteries in some of Google's Pixel 4a phones still out there? Google has not really said. Now that many Pixel 4a owners are experiencing drastically reduced battery life after an uncommon update for an end-of-life phone, they are facing a strange array of options with no path back to the phone they had.

Google's "Pixel 4a Battery Performance Program," announced in early January, told owners that an automatic update would, for some "Impacted Devices," reduce their battery's runtime and charging performance. "Impacted" customers could choose, within one year's time, between three "appeasement" options: sending in the phone for a battery replacement, getting $50 or the equivalent in their location, or receiving $100 in credit in the Google Store toward a new Pixel phone. No safety or hazard issue was mentioned in the support document.

Google did not explain why only certain devices were affected, but Hector Martin -- of Asahi Linux on Apple silicon, open source Kinect drivers, and other fame -- took apart the update's binary kernel and has some guesses. Martin points out that the updated Pixel 4a kernel has these interesting characteristics:

- It seems to have been built by a Google engineer "on their personal machine, not the proper buildsystem."
-- There is no source provided, as would normally be required of a Linux kernel build, though it may only need to be provided on request under the GNU General Public License.
- The maximum charge voltage of certain battery profiles changes from 4.44 volts to 3.95, which would mean batteries cannot charge to anywhere near their former potential.
- There are two main battery profiles, with distinct "ATL" and "LSN" markers; Martin suggests they relate to Amperex Technology Limited and Lishen, manufacturers of battery cells.
- LSN-tagged batteries assigned the "debug" profile can see capacity reduced from 3,080 milliamp hours (mAh) to 1,539 mAh. The big question is why Google pushed an automatic update to a phone from 2020. "No news or community reports have surfaced yet of Pixel 4a devices causing fires, or even simply failing to function, after four years," writes Ars' Kevin Purdy. "It's an automatic update with a strong fix, but for what?"

Google's support page only states that the update will "improve the stability of their battery's performance."

July saw the news that Meta had launched a powerful open-source AI model, Llama 3.1.

But the Free Software Foundation evaluated Llama 3.1's license agreement, and announced this week that "this is not a free software license and you should not use it, nor any software released under it." Not only does it deny users their freedom, but it also purports to hand over powers to the licensors that should only be exercised through lawmaking by democratically-elected governments.

Moreover, it has been applied by Meta to a machine-learning (ML) application, even though the license completely fails to address software freedom challenges inherent in such applications....

We decided to review the Llama license because it is being applied to an ML application and model, while at the same time being presented by Meta as if it grants users a degree of software freedom. This is certainly not the case, and we want the free software community to have clarity on this.
In other news, the FSF also announced the winner of the logo contest for their big upcoming 40th anniversary celebration.

Richard Stallman founded the Free Software Foundation as a nonprofit in 1985 with four other directors (including MIT computer science professor Gerald Jay Sussman). Sussman remains on the Board of directors, along with EFF co-founder John Gilmore and five others.

Friday the eight directors published a new article explaining how their goal and principles are protected by the nonprofit's governance structure: An obvious option, used by many organizations, was to let supporters sign up as members and have the members' votes control everything about the organization. We rejected that approach because it would have made the organization vulnerable to being taken over by people who disagreed with its mission... [A]ctivist organizations should be steady in their mission. Already in 1985, we could see that many of the people who appreciated the GNU Project's work (developing useful GNU software packages) did not support our goal and values. To look at software issues in terms of freedom was radical and many were reluctant to consider it... So we chose a structure whereby the FSF's governing body would appoint new people to itself... [T]he FSF voting members consist of all the present board members and some past board members. We have found that having some former board members remain as voting members helps stabilize the base of FSF governance.

The divergence between our values and those of most users was expressed differently after 1998, when the term "open source" was coined. It referred to a class of programs which were free/libre or pretty close, but it stood for the same old values of convenience and success, not the goal of freedom for the users of those programs. For them, "scratching your own itch" replaced liberating the community around us. People could become supporters of "open source" without any change in their ideas of right and wrong... It would have been almost inevitable for supporters of "open source" to join the FSF, then vote to convert it into an "open source" organization, if its structure allowed such a course. Fortunately, we had made sure it did not. So we were able to continue spreading the idea that software freedom is a freedom that everyone needs and everyone is entitled to, just like freedom of speech.

In recent years, several influential "open source" organizations have come to be dominated by large companies. Large companies are accustomed to seeking indirect political power, and astroturf campaigns are one of their usual methods. It would be easy for companies to pay thousands of people to join the FSF if by doing so they could alter its goals and values. Once again, our defensive structure has protected us...

A recent source of disagreement with the free software movement's philosophy comes from those who would like to make software licenses forbid the use of programs for various practices they consider harmful. Such license restrictions would not achieve the goal of ending those practices and each restriction would split the free software community. Use restrictions are inimical to the free software community; whatever we think of the practices they try to forbid, we must oppose making software licenses restrict them. Software developers should not have the power to control what jobs people do with their computers by attaching license restrictions. And when some acts that can be done by using computing call for systematic prohibition, we must not allow companies that offer software or online services to decide which ones. Such restrictions, when they are necessary, must be laws, adopted democratically by legislatures...

What new political disagreements will exist in the free software community ten, twenty or thirty years from now? People may try to disconnect the FSF from its values for reasons we have not anticipated, but we can be confident that our structure will give us a base for standing firm. We recently asked our associate members to help us evaluate the current members of the FSF board of directors through a process that will help us preserve the basic structure that protects the FSF from pressure to change its values. A year ago we used this process to select new board members, and it worked very well.

Sincerely,

The Free Software Foundation Board of Directors

TPM is a dedicated chip or firmware enabling hardware-level security, housing encryption keys, certificates, passwords, and sensitive data, "and shielding them from unauthorized access," Microsoft senior product manager Steven Hosking wrote last month, declaring TPM 2.0 to be "a non-negotiable standard for the future of Windows."

Or, as BleepingComputer put it, Microsoft "made it abundantly clear... that Windows 10 users won't be able to upgrade to Windows 11 unless their systems come with TPM 2.0 support." (This despite the fact that Statcounter Global data "shows that more than 61% of all Windows systems worldwide still run Windows 10.") They add that Microsoft "announced on October 31 that Windows 10 home users will be able to delay the switch to Windows 11 for one more year if they're willing to pay $30 for Extended Security Updates."

But last week the Free Software Foundation's campaigns manager delivered a message on the FSF's official blog: "Keep putting pressure on Microsoft." Grassroots organization against a corporation as large as Microsoft is never easy. They have the advertising budget to claim that they "love Linux" (sic), not to mention the money and political willpower to corral free software developers from around the world on their nonfree platform Microsoft GitHub. This year's International Day Against DRM took aim at one specific injustice: their requiring a hardware TPM module for users being forced to "upgrade" to Windows 11. As Windows 10 will soon stop receiving security updates, this is a (Microsoft-manufactured) problem for users still on this operating system. Normally, offloading cryptography to a different hardware module could be seen as a good thing — but with nonfree software, it can only spell trouble for the user...

What's crucial now is to keep putting pressure on Microsoft, whether that's through switching to GNU/Linux, avoiding new releases of their software, or actions as simple as moving your projects off of Microsoft GitHub. If you're concerned about e-waste or have friends who work to combat climate change, getting them together to tell them about free software is the perfect way to help our movement grow, and free a few more users from Microsoft's digital restrictions. If you're concerned about e-waste or have friends who work to combat climate change, getting them together to tell them about free software is the perfect way to help our movement grow, and free a few more users from Microsoft's digital restrictions.

LWN: The long-awaited release of the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) 3.0 is on the way, marking the first major update since version 2.10 was released in April 2018. It now features a GTK 3 user interface and GIMP 3.0 introduces significant changes to the core platform and plugins. This release also brings performance and usability improvements, as well as more compatibility with Wayland and complex input sources.

GIMP 3.0 is the first release to use GTK 3, a more modern foundation than the GTK 2 base of prior releases. GTK 4 has been available for a few years now, and is on the project's radar, but the plan was always to finish the GTK 3 work first. Moving to GTK 3 brings initial Wayland compatibility and HiDPI scaling. In addition, this allows for GIMP users to take advantage of multi-touch input, bringing pinch-to-zoom gestures to the program, and offering a better experience when working with complex peripherals, such as advanced drawing tablets. These features were not previously possible due to the limitations of GTK 2.

A secondary result of the transition to GTK 3 is a refreshed user interface (UI), now with support for CSS themes included. In this release, four themes are available by default, including light, dark, and gray themes, along with a high-contrast theme for users with visual impairments. Additionally, this release has transitioned to using GTK's header bar component, typically used to combine an application's toolbar and title bar into one unit. To maintain familiarity with previous releases, however, GIMP 3.0 still supports the traditional menu interface.

Longtime Slashdot reader slack_justyb writes: The Fast Light Toolkit released version 1.4.0 of the venerable, though sometimes looking a bit dated, toolkit from the '90s. New in this version are better CMake support, HiDPI support, and initial support for Wayland on Linux and Wayland on FreeBSD. Programs compiled and linked to this library launch using Wayland if it is available at runtime and fall back to X11 if not. FLTK 1.4.0 can be downloaded here. Documentation is also available.

The Free Software Foundation turns forty on October 4, 2025 "and we will end our thirties on a high note!" they announced this week: We wish we were celebrating the achievement of software freedom for all computer users, but we're not there yet. Until our mission becomes reality and we can retire, instead, we are celebrating forty years of activism, and all that we have achieved.

Since our founding in 1985, we laid out many stepping stones on the road to software freedom, and we're eager to continue building the road ahead. We will celebrate our fortieth in the spirit of bringing the international free software community together, discussing what we can do next to make the world freer, and celebrating how far we've come. We're aiming for a libre planet! Sounds familiar? Instead of hosting one LibrePlanet conference in 2025, we're planning a jam-packed anniversary year, filled with several new and exciting activities!

We'll begin the anniversary year with an unprecedented memorabilia auction, starting as a silent auction on March 17, and culminating in a virtual live auction on March 23. By moving out of the FSF office, we got to sort through all the fun and historically important memorabilia and selected the best ones. This is your chance to get your very own personal souvenir of the FSF, from original GNU art to a famous katana and the very same VT220 that was standing on the FSF's front desk, and which people used to display ASCII art or to play free software games.

Let's claim the month of May as libre planet (or libre local) month! We're inviting free software supporters like you anywhere in the world, to organize an in-person community meetup in your area to bring people together. We're setting up a small fund for these local gatherings, can send stickers, flyers, ideas and tips, and you can invite an FSF staff member to give a talk or workshop during your event and of course, we'll help promote it...

Then, on the actual birthday of the FSF on October 4, 2025, there will be a big celebration in Boston, MA, and the entire free software community is invited... These are just some of the big ticket items we have worked out, but there is more! Keep an eye out on the FSF's pages, we'll be posting exact information on everything upcoming.
They're looking for volunteers — and they also suggest organizing a community meetup in your area. Plus, there's also an FSF Anniversary Logo Contest. "We would like to source the fortieth anniversary logo design directly from a free software supporter. Everyone is welcome to submit a design (or even multiple designs) no matter your previous experience in design."

The winning design "will be chosen by the community and ultimately immortalized in the history of the FSF," according to the announcement — displayed on the FSF homepage, printed on all celebration materials, "and possibly even stamped on some merchandise." But of course, the contest's requirements include respecting everyone's freedoms: - The logo must be produced using exclusively free software editing tools, such as GIMP, Krita, or Inkscape;

- Any fonts used in the design must be under the SIL Open Font license or another free license...
"The final logo will be released under CC BY, attributed to the FSF."

Long-time Slashdot reader samj — also a long-time Debian developer — tells us there's some opposition to the newly-released Open Source AI definition. He calls it a "fork" that undermines the original Open Source definition (which was originally derived from Debian's Free Software Guidelines, written primarily by Bruce Perens), and points us to a new domain with a petition declaring that instead Open Source shall be defined "solely by the Open Source Definition version 1.9. Any amendments or new definitions shall only be recognized with clear community consensus via an open and transparent process."

This move follows some discussion on the Debian mailing list: Allowing "Open Source AI" to hide their training data is nothing but setting up a "data barrier" protecting the monopoly, disabling anybody other than the first party to reproduce or replicate an AI. Once passed, OSI is making a historical mistake towards the FOSS ecosystem.
They're not the only ones worried about data. This week TechCrunch noted an August study which "found that many 'open source' models are basically open source in name only. The data required to train the models is kept secret, the compute power needed to run them is beyond the reach of many developers, and the techniques to fine-tune them are intimidatingly complex. Instead of democratizing AI, these 'open source' projects tend to entrench and expand centralized power, the study's authors concluded."

samj shares the concern about training data, arguing that training data is the source code and that this new definition has real-world consequences. (On a personal note, he says it "poses an existential threat to our pAI-OS project at the non-profit Kwaai Open Source Lab I volunteer at, so we've been very active in pushing back past few weeks.")

And he also came up with a detailed response by asking ChatGPT. What would be the implications of a Debian disavowing the OSI's Open Source AI definition? ChatGPT composed a 7-point, 14-paragraph response, concluding that this level of opposition would "create challenges for AI developers regarding licensing. It might also lead to a fragmentation of the open-source community into factions with differing views on how AI should be governed under open-source rules." But "Ultimately, it could spur the creation of alternative definitions or movements aimed at maintaining stricter adherence to the traditional tenets of software freedom in the AI age."

However the official FAQ for the new Open Source AI definition argues that training data "does not equate to a software source code." Training data is important to study modern machine learning systems. But it is not what AI researchers and practitioners necessarily use as part of the preferred form for making modifications to a trained model.... [F]orks could include removing non-public or non-open data from the training dataset, in order to train a new Open Source AI system on fully public or open data...

[W]e want Open Source AI to exist also in fields where data cannot be legally shared, for example medical AI. Laws that permit training on data often limit the resharing of that same data to protect copyright or other interests. Privacy rules also give a person the rightful ability to control their most sensitive information — like decisions about their health. Similarly, much of the world's Indigenous knowledge is protected through mechanisms that are not compatible with later-developed frameworks for rights exclusivity and sharing.
Read on for the rest of their response...

Libreboot is a distribution of coreboot "aimed at replacing the proprietary BIOS firmware contained by most computers."

So then what exactly is GNU Boot? Its home page explains... In November 2022, Libreboot began to include non-libre code. We have made repeated efforts to continue collaboration with those developers to help their version of Libreboot remain libre, but that was not successful. Now we've stepped forward to stand up for freedom, ours and that of the wider community, by maintaining our own version — a genuinely libre Libreboot, that after some hurdles gave birth to this project: GNU Boot.
But today, Phoronix writes: While priding itself on being "100% free", last December [GNU Boot] had to drop some motherboard support and CPU code after discovering they were shipping some files that are non-free by their free software standards. Today they announced another mistake in having inadvertently been shipping additional non-free code.

GNU Boot discovered an issue with non-free code affecting not only them but also some of the Linux distributions that pride themselves on being fully free software / 100% open-source. This latest snafu they say is "more problematic" than their prior non-free code discover due to impacting the free software Linux distributions too. The issue at hand though comes down to test data contained within the archive and that containing non-free code in the form of microcode, BIOS bits, and Intel Management Engine firmware.
"We also contacted Replicant..." according to the announcement, "a free Android distro that also ships vboot source code." And in addition, "We had to re-release all the affected tarballs." (Which at this point is three release candidates...)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Liliputing: The Fedora Asahi Remix GNU/Linux distribution is now shipping with alpha versions of OpenGL, OpenCL, and Vulkan graphics drivers that allow you to play some games on Macs with M1 or M2 series processors. But there are a few things to keep in mind. One is that most of the PC games you're likely going to want to play are designed to run on Windows PCs with DirectX drivers and x86 processors. So there's some emulation required to get them to run on Macs with ARM-based processors, a Linux-based operating system, and Vulkan drivers.

Some of the work was also made possible by the folks at Valve, who developed the Proton software that allows many PC games to run on Linux. And during a live demo at XDC 2024, developer Alyssa Rosenzweig demonstrated the Steam game client loading and running on an Apple Silicon Mac running Asahi Linux. For that reason, it takes a lot of RAM -- according to the Asahi team, "most games require 16GB of memory due to emulation overhead." So you're probably not going to be able to do much entry-level gaming on an entry-level Mac with just 8GB of RAM.

Some of the titles that have been confirmed to be playable include Cyberpunk 2077, The Witcher 3, Fallout 4, Control, Portal 2, and Ghostrunner. But there's a difference between playable and smooth. Developers say performance improvements will be required before "newer AAA titles" can run at 60 frames per second or higher. But less demanding games like Hollow Knight should run at full speed.

"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 6.2." From the report: Plasma 6.2 includes a smorgasbord of new features for users of drawing tablets. It implements more complete support for the Wayland color management protocol, and enables it by default. There is also improved brightness handling for HDR and ICC profiles, as well as HDR performance. A new tone mapping feature built into Plasma's KWin compositor will help improve the look of images with a brightness or set of colors greater than what the screen can display, thus reducing the "blown out" look such images can otherwise exhibit.

You can now override misbehaving applications that block the system from going to sleep or locking the screen (and thus prevent saving power), and you can also adjust the brightness of each connected monitor machine separately. Plasma's built-in app store and software management tool, Discover, now supports PostmarketOS packages for your mobile devices, helps you write better reviews of apps, and presents apps' license information more accurately. In Plasma 6.2, we overhauled System Settings' Accessibility page and added colorblindness filters. They've also added support for the full "sticky keys" feature on Wayland. You can read more about what's new in the complete changelog.

"Can you believe that we've been demanding user freedom since 1985?" asks a new blog post at FSF.org: Today, we're celebrating our thirty-ninth anniversary, the "lace year," which represents the intertwined nature and strength of our relationship with the free software community. We wouldn't be here without you, and we are so grateful for everyone who has stood with us, advocating for a world where complete user freedom is the norm and not the exception.

As we celebrate our anniversary and reflect on the past thirty-nine years, we feel inspired by how far we've come, not only as a movement but as an organization, and the changes that we've gone through. While we inevitably have challenges ahead, we feel encouraged and eager to take them on knowing that you'll be right there with us, working for a free future for everyone. Here's to many more years of fighting for user freedom!
Their suggestions for celebrating include:

• Try a fully free distribution of GNU/Linux or help someone else give it a try

• Learn how to encrypt your emails and opt out of bulk surveillance

• Take a small step with big impact and swap out one nonfree program with one that's truly free

• If you have an Android phone, download F-Droid, which is a catalogue of hundreds of free software applications

• Wish us happy birthday on social media. [Which for the FSF is Mastodon, PeerTube, and GNU social.]

• Join a Free Software Directory (FSD) meeting, which we host every Friday from 16:00 to 19:00 UTC.

• Become an associate member or gift a membership to a friend

• Donate $39 to help support free software advocacy

• Print off stickers of our 39th birthday cake

• Change your desktop background to an early-2000s-cyberspace-inspired image of our former front desk. (And then switch out your browser theme to match your new desktop background.)

And to help with the celebrations they share a free video teaching the basics of SuperCollider (the free and open source audio synthesis/algorithmic composition software). The video appears on FramaTube, an instance of the decentralized (and ActivityPub-federated) Peertube video platform, supported by the French non-profit Framasoft and powered by WebTorrent, using peer-to-peer technology to reduce load on individual servers.

"Looks like there's a storm brewing, and it's not good news," writes ancient Slashdot reader jd. "Whether or not the bugs are classically security defects or not, this is extremely bad PR for the Linux and Open Source community. It's not clear from the article whether this affects other Open Source projects, such as FreeBSD." From a report: A critical unauthenticated Remote Code Execution (RCE) vulnerability has been discovered, impacting all GNU/Linux systems. As per agreements with developers, the flaw, which has existed for over a decade, will be fully disclosed in less than two weeks. Despite the severity of the issue, no Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) identifiers have been assigned yet, although experts suggest there should be at least three to six. Leading Linux distributors such as Canonical and RedHat have confirmed the flaw's severity, rating it 9.9 out of 10. This indicates the potential for catastrophic damage if exploited. However, despite this acknowledgment, no working fix is still available. Developers remain embroiled in debates over whether some aspects of the vulnerability impact security.

An anonymous reader shared this report from DevClass: A report from developer-focused analyst Redmonk finds "there does not seem to be a clear link between moving from an open source to proprietary license and increasing the company's value."

Senior analyst Rachel Stevens studied the question of whether the companies that changed from open source to proprietary licenses have since reported better financial positions. In particular, she looked at MongoDB, which changed from AGPL (GNU Affero General Public License) to its SSPL (Server Side Public License) in 2018; Elastic Co, which changed from Apache 2 to SSPL or Elastic License in early 2021; HashiCorp, which changed from MPL (Mozilla Public License 2.0) a year ago, and Confluent, which checked from Apache 2 to its own Confluent Community License in 2018.

The report is too recent to take account of Elastic's reversion to AGPL; and the financial impact of that is of course yet to be known, though it is perhaps unlikely that the switch back would have been made if the company considered it detrimental to its finances. Rather, Elastic's latest licensing change reinforces the view that proprietary licenses are not necessarily more profitable... All the companies studied increased their revenue after their license change, Stevens said, but added that the rate of change was similar to that before the change...

MongoDB stated in 2018 that "once an open source project becomes interesting or popular, it becomes too easy for the cloud vendors to capture all the value and give nothing back to the community." Six years later, it remains the case that the large cloud vendors are highly profitable, but that these companies who changed their license are not. In February this year, Bruce Perens, creator of the 1998 Open Source Definition, described open source as "a great corporate welfare program" and not at all what he had intended...

The new Redmonk report suggests that such license manoeuvres are neither fatal nor beneficial to the finances of the companies involved — though there are so many caveats that it is impossible to draw firm conclusions.
The report's final sentence concludes that "there does not seem to be a clear link between moving from an open source to proprietary license and increasing the company's value."

"As free software activists, we ought to take the opportunity to look at the situation and see how things could have gone differently," writes FSF campaigns manager Greg Farough: Let's be clear: in principle, there is nothing ethically wrong with automatic updates so long as the user has made an informed choice to receive them... Although we can understand how the situation developed, one wonders how wise it is for so many critical services around the world to hedge their bets on a single distribution of a single operating system made by a single stupefyingly predatory monopoly in Redmond, Washington. Instead, we can imagine a more horizontal structure, where this airline and this public library are using different versions of GNU/Linux, each with their own security teams and on different versions of the Linux(-libre) kernel...

As of our writing, we've been unable to ascertain just how much access to the Windows kernel source code Microsoft granted to CrowdStrike engineers. (For another thing, the root cause of the problem appears to have been an error in a configuration file.) But this being the free software movement, we could guarantee that all security engineers and all stakeholders could have equal access to the source code, proving the old adage that "with enough eyes, all bugs are shallow." There is no good reason to withhold code from the public, especially code so integral to the daily functioning of so many public institutions and businesses. In a cunning PR spin, it appears that Microsoft has started blaming the incident on third-party firms' access to kernel source and documentation. Translated out of Redmond-ese, the point they are trying to make amounts to "if only we'd been allowed to be more secretive, this wouldn't have happened...!"

We also need to see that calling for a diversity of providers of nonfree software that are mere front ends for "cloud" software doesn't solve the problem. Correcting it fully requires switching to free software that runs on the user's own computer.The Free Software Foundation is often accused of being utopian, but we are well aware that moving airlines, libraries, and every other institution affected by the CrowdStrike outage to free software is a tremendous undertaking. Given free software's distinct ethical advantage, not to mention the embarrassing damage control underway from both Microsoft and CrowdStrike, we think the move is a necessary one. The more public an institution, the more vitally it needs to be running free software.

For what it's worth, it's also vital to check the syntax of your configuration files. CrowdStrike engineers would do well to remember that one, next time.