Planet GNU

www @ Savannah: Registration Is Open!

Jason Self — 2012-02-09T23:41:27+00:00

Registration for LibrePlanet 2012 is now open! March 24th/25th 2012 at the University of Massachusetts, Boston -- http://libreplanet.org/wiki/LibrePlanet2012

FSF News: Announcing JavaScript License Web Labels

brett — 2012-02-09T22:01:22+00:00

In 2009, Richard Stallman published “The JavaScript Trap.” It observed that JavaScript served from the Web is now often significant software—and if it's nonfree, it causes all the same problems for users as any other proprietary software. Anybody who's serious about protecting their freedom should reject nonfree JavaScript, just like you'd reject traditional proprietary desktop software.

Unfortunately, this has been easier said than done so far. Browsers will typically download and run JavaScript without the user's knowledge. People who want to avoid running nonfree JavaScript have had little recourse to date besides disabling JavaScript entirely—but that's throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Enter JavaScript License Web Labels. This is a format that we propose webmasters use to publish license information and source code for the JavaScript they deploy on their sites. It looks simple enough to be accessible to any visitor, but provides enough detail that automated tools can confirm that all of a site's JavaScript is actually free. Such software will make it practical for people to run free JavaScript and refuse nonfree code. Tools like this are already being developed: LibreJS is a plug-in for Mozilla-based browsers that will support JavaScript License Web Labels.

Webmasters should find a lot to like in JavaScript License Web Labels, too. We believe that webmasters that correctly publish JavaScript License Web Labels will comply with conditions in the GNU GPL and AGPL to accompany object code with a copy of the license terms and a way for recipients to get source code. The format is flexible enough that any interested webmaster should be able to use it: it doesn't require them to serve the JavaScript files any specific way, or coordinate with upstream JavaScript developers.

We hope these labels will empower users to be as selective about what licenses they'll accept for JavaScript as they are for traditional desktop software. That said, this is an early effort to tackle the problem, and we're happy to consider changes that can make it more attractive to webmasters or their visitors. For details about the decision-making process behind JavaScript License Web Labels, and how you can send feedback to us, please read our accompanying rationale document. We look forward to hearing from you.

GNU MediaGoblin: MediaGoblin 0.2.1: Gearing Up

2012-02-09T15:00:00+00:00

Welcome to MediaGoblin 0.2.1: Gearing Up! This release has largely been about paving the way forward for MediaGoblin's future and restructuring under the hood. Nonetheless, a good number of awesome features got implemented for this release.

We've brought some old-school awesomeness with ascii art support to go along with our video support (which you may remember we were pretty jazzed about adding in our last release). In the future, you can expect to see support for all sorts of media types, including 3d models, slides, and presentations!

There are plenty of nice UI tweaks, including nice, tidy-looking comment areas. You can now easily apply Creative Commons licenses to your MediaGoblin media.

We're now able to provide a customizable EXIF metadata display. EXIF data means all the little tags that modern media recording devices include inside your image files. If your camera records it, you can display it: location, camera manufacturer, what the camera model was, the focal length, etc. If you took a sideways picture (and your camera is fancy enough to detect it) then MediaGoblin will rotate your image in the right direction for you. The default setting is hidden (but not scraped) metadata. Since this is MediaGoblin, it's easily customized for your instance -- just turn on exif_visible option in mediagoblin.ini.

GPS support is working! Does your camera have a GPS in it? Then you can haz maps. We worked hard to build compatibility with another great FLOSS project, OpenStreetMap. Again, this feature is off by default. You can enable option geolocation_map_visible in your mediagoblin.ini to show GPS info.

What about "under the hood" news? If MediaGoblin were a car we were building from scratch, then we recently decided to replace the engine. After significant discussion, we decided to switch from MongoDB to SQL using the python SQLAlchemy library. The SQL code is actually already very close to full deployment in the main repository and many parts have already performed well in tests. Huge props are due to Elrond who has made herculean efforts towards the Great Database Migration of 2012. The transition is already well on its way!

We're smoothing the way for federation. We're kicking off Kuneco (which means "togetherness" in Esperanto) is the collection of libraries we're building so that OStatus, the software that drives our inspiring forebears at StatusNet/identi.ca, will play nicely with python webapps. We also implemented PubSubHubbub (push) support in this release. We can now "push" notifications of our feeds out to the PubSubHubbub servers. One small step towards federation, in a series of many steps that will one day add up to a large step. More on this soon!

MediaGoblin is coming soon to a device near you! We want your phones, desktop applications and tablets to be able to submit media. We're putting together an API that will allow programmers to hook their applications into MediaGoblin. One day we'll be part of a massive decentralized ether and having a great API for interoperability is one way we start to get there.

So much amazing work happened to make this release possible! We could not have done without all of our amazing people. People worked over the holidays. Their paid jobs said, "Hey take a break this month." and our contributors took that time off and gifted it to the 0.2.1 release. Thanks so much to: Aleksej Serdjukov, Aaron Williamson, Christopher Allan Webber, Deb Nicholson, Elrond of Samba TNG, Jef van Schendel, Joar Wandborg, Karen Rustad, Michele Azzolari, Will Kahn-Greene! (If we missed you, let us know so we can correct the post!)

Get on board! MediaGoblin is actively seeking testers, translators, coders, and bug filers. We'll save you a seat as we set out on on the road to federation!

FSF Events: Por una sociedad digital libre

jrasata — 2012-02-08T19:21:37+00:00

Las actividades cuyo objetivo es la "inclusión" de más personas en el empleo de las tecnologías digitales se basan en la suposición de que ésto sea invariablemente algo bueno. Parecería que así es, si se juzga considerando únicamente la conveniencia práctica inmediata. Sin embargo, si juzgamos también en términos de derechos humanos, es el tipo de mundo digital en el que nos quieren insertar lo que determina si se trata de un bien o de un mal. Antes de luchar por la inclusión digital, debemos cerciorarnos de que las personas estarán en un mundo digital bueno.

Favor de rellenar este formulario, para que podamos contactarle acerca de eventos futuros en la región madrileña.

FSF Events: Copyright vs. Community

jrasata — 2012-02-08T18:20:41+00:00

Copyright developed in the age of the printing press, and was designed to fit with the system of centralized copying imposed by the printing press. But the copyright system does not fit well with computer networks, and only draconian punishments can enforce it.

The global corporations that profit from copyright are lobbying for draconian punishments, and to increase their copyright powers, while suppressing public access to technology. But if we seriously hope to serve the only legitimate purpose of copyright--to promote progress, for the benefit of the public--then we must make changes in the other direction.

Please fill out this form, so that we can contact you about future events in and around Braga.

Paolo Carlini: C++11 tidbits: Non-static Data Member Initializers

Paolo Carlini — 2012-02-08T12:03:16+00:00

Hi!

starting this month, thanks also to Chris (Jones) help and encouragement, I'm posting here the "C++11 tidbits" which I usually contribute to the Tools group Linux & VM partner newsletter. Enjoy! ;)

Despite the long name, Non-static Data Member Initializers are a rather straightforward new feature. In fact the GCC Bugzilla reveals novice C++ users often tried to use it in C++98, when the syntax was illegal! It must be said that the same feature is also available in Java, so adding it to C++ makes life easier for people using both languages.

The GCC implementation is brand new. It will be available soon in gcc-4.7.0 but it seems already quite stable and ready to play with.

People looking for self-contained specifications, outside the Standard itself, may consider fetching paper N2756 (and its earlier versions) from the ISO web site for more rationale.

In a nutshell, in C++11 the following are both legal:

  struct A
  {
    int m;
    A() : m(7) { }
  };

  struct B
  {
    int m = 7;   // non-static data member initializer
  };

thus the code:

  A a;
  B b;

  std::cout << a.m << '\n';
  std::cout << b.m << std::endl;

prints '7' followed by '7', because both the 'm' member of 'a' and the 'm' member of 'b' are initialized to 7.

A non-static data member initializer can be always overridden, thus:

  struct C
  {
    int m = 7;
    C() : m(14) { }
  };

  C c;

  std::cout << c.m << std::endl;

prints '14', not '7'.

This is actually very useful in practice, because it allows concisely written classes with many constructors, most relying on non-static initializers while default values are overridden for a few, selected data members. For interesting examples see the ISO papers.

In the examples we have been using built-in integer types, but the feature works with any kind of data member, for example std::string, std::vector, or any user-defined type. It also integrates nicely with other C++11 features like initializer lists. For example, the following is perfectly legal:

  struct D
  {
    std::vector<int> m{4, 5, 6};
  };

The code:

  D d;

  std::cout << d.m[0] << '\n';
  std::cout << d.m[1] << '\n';
  std::cout << d.m[2] << std::endl;

then prints '4', '5', and '6', on separate lines.

More non-trivial examples are available in the GCC test suite under g++.dg/cpp0x/nsdmi* and also in the C++ runtime library internals where the new construct is already exploited for the implementation of <mutex>. See, for example, once_flag, __mutex_base, and <condition_variable>.

As for all the other new C++ features, please don't hesitate to report bugs!

Aleksander Morgado: FOSDEM talk slides online

aleksander — 2012-02-08T11:28:07+00:00

The slides of my talk about LTE and ModemManager in FOSDEM are now online at the Lanedo articles website:

LTE is here and ModemManager is (almost) ready for it

Filed under: GNU Planet, Lanedo Planet, Meetings, Planets Tagged: FOSDEM, LTE, ModemManager, slides

Sylvain Beucler: Make sure glue isn't stripped

2012-02-07T21:38:48+00:00

If you ever get this cryptic error when loading an Android native app:

FATAL EXCEPTION: main
java.lang.RuntimeException: Unable to start activity ComponentInfo{org.wikibooks.OpenGL/android.app.NativeActivity}: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Unable to load native library: /data/data/org.wikibooks.OpenGL/lib/libnative-activity.so
       at android.app.ActivityThread.performLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:1768)
       at android.app.ActivityThread.handleLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:1784)
       at android.app.ActivityThread.access$1500(ActivityThread.java:123)
       at android.app.ActivityThread$H.handleMessage(ActivityThread.java:939)
       at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:99)
       at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:130)
       at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:3835)
       at java.lang.reflect.Method.invokeNative(Native Method)
       at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:507)
       at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:847)
       at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:605)
       at dalvik.system.NativeStart.main(Native Method)
Caused by: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Unable to load native library: /data/data/org.wikibooks.OpenGL/lib/libnative-activity.so
       at android.app.NativeActivity.onCreate(NativeActivity.java:199)
       at android.app.Instrumentation.callActivityOnCreate(Instrumentation.java:1047)
       at android.app.ActivityThread.performLaunchActivity(ActivityThread.java:1722)
       ... 11 more

This may mean that Java couldn't find the ANativeActivity_onCreate function in your code, because it was stripped by the compiler.

If you use the native_app_glue NDK module, you may have noticed this strange code:

    // Make sure glue isn't stripped.
    app_dummy();

Let's experiment what happens with and without this line:

Calling app_dummy:

$ arm-linux-androideabi-objdump -T libs/armeabi/libnative-activity.so  | grep ANativeActivity_onCreate
000067fc g    DF .text  000000f8 ANativeActivity_onCreate

Not calling app_dummy :

$ arm-linux-androideabi-objdump -T libs/armeabi/libnative-activity.so | grep ANativeActivity_onCreate
$   # nothing

native_app_glue mainly defines Android callbacks. Since none of them are called directly by your code, the compiler strips the android_native_app_glue.o module entirely. If you use app_dummy however, it embeds it. Fortunately the compiler cannot strip the module on a per-function basis

That's why you need to call app_dummy when using the native_app_glue NDK module.

This looks like a ugly work-around though - isn't there a cleaner way?

FSF News: Nominations are open for the 14th annual Free Software Awards

mattl — 2012-02-07T21:09:00+00:00

Award for the Advancement of Free Software

The Free Software Foundation Award for the Advancement of Free Software is presented annually by FSF president Richard Stallman to an individual who has made a great contribution to the progress and development of free software, through activities that accord with the spirit of free software.

Last year, Rob Savoye was recognized with the Award for the Advancement of Free Software for his contributions to compiler and testing tools, and his leadership of the GNU Gnash project, a fully-free replacement for Adobe Flash. Savoye joined a prestigious list of previous winners including John Gilmore, Wietse Venema, Harald Welte, Ted Ts'o, Andrew Tridgell, Theo de Raadt, Alan Cox, Larry Lessig, Guido van Rossum, Brian Paul, Miguel de Icaza and Larry Wall.

Award for Projects of Social Benefit

Nominations are also open for the 2011 Award for Projects of Social Benefit.

This award is presented to the project or team responsible for applying free software, or the ideas of the free software movement, in a project that intentionally and significantly benefits society in other aspects of life.

We look to recognize projects or teams that encourage collaboration to accomplish social tasks. A long-term commitment to one's project (or the potential for a long-term commitment) is crucial to this end.

This award stresses the use of free software in the service of humanity. We have deliberately chosen this broad criterion so that many different areas of activity can be considered. However, one area that is not included is that of free software itself. Projects with a primary goal of promoting or advancing free software are not eligible for this award (we honor those projects with our annual Award for the Advancement of Free Software).

We will consider any project or team that uses free software or its philosophy to address a goal important to society. To qualify, a project must use free software, produce free documentation, or use the idea of free software as defined in the Free Software Definition. Work done commercially is eligible, but we will give this award to the project or team that best utilizes resources for society's greater benefit.

Last year, The Tor Project received this award, in recognition of its work to fight against surveillance inflicted by increasingly restrictive governments and to improve the safety and wellbeing of all Internet citizens.

Previous winners have included the Internet Archive, Creative Commons, Groklaw, the Sahana project, and Wikipedia.

Eligibility

In the case of both awards, previous winners are not eligible for nomination, but renomination of other previous nominees is encouraged. Only individuals are eligible for nomination for the Advancement of Free Software Award (not projects), and only projects can be nominated for the Social Benefit Award (not individuals).

The award committee has not been finalized, but is made up of previous winners, free software activists and FSF president, Richard Stallman.

Please send your nominations to award-nominations@gnu.org, on or before Monday, November 7th, 2011. Please submit nominations in the following format:

In the email message subject line, either put the name of the person you are nominating for the Award for Advancement of Free Software, or put the name of the project for the Award for Projects of Social Benefit.
Please include, in the body of your message, an explanation (40 lines or less) of the work done and why you think it is especially important to the advancement of software freedom or how it benefits society, respectively.
Please state, in the body of your message, where to find the materials (e.g., software, manuals, or writing) which your nomination is based on.

Information about the previous awards can be found at http://www.fsf.org/awards. Winners will be recognized at an awards ceremony at the LibrePlanet conference tentatively scheduled for March 2012, in Boston, Massachusetts.

FSF Events: For a Free Digital Society

jrasata — 2012-02-07T17:17:30+00:00

Activities directed at ``including'' more people in the use of digital technology are predicated on the assumption that such inclusion is invariably a good thing. It appears so, when judged solely by immediate practical convenience. However, if we also judge in terms of human rights, whether digital inclusion is good or bad depends on what kind of digital world we are to be included in. If we wish to work towards digital inclusion as a goal, it behooves us to make sure it is the good kind.

The speech is public and all are encouraged to attend.

Please fill out this form, so that we can contact you about future events in and around Avignon.

FSF Events: Rencontre avec Jean Pierre Berlan (agronome et économiste) et Richard Stallman

jrasata — 2012-02-07T17:07:31+00:00

Veuillez remplir notre formulaire de contact, pour que nous puissions vous contacter au sujet d'événements à venir dans la région avignonaise.

freeipmi @ Savannah: FreeIPMI 1.1.2 Released

Albert Chu — 2012-02-07T16:46:44+00:00

http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/freeipmi/freeipmi-1.1.2.tar.gz

Major Updates:

o In ipmi-oem, support new Dell C410x OEM extensions
slot-power-toggle, slot-power-control, get-port-map,
set-port-map.
o In ipmiconsole, support new --serial-keepalive-empty option.
o In bmc-device, support new --rearm-sensor option.
o In ipmi-oem, add additional Dell get-system-info options.
o In ipmi-sensors, workaround sensor reading issue on Sun Blade
x6250 and Sun Blade 6000M2.
o In libipmiconsole, do not deactivate a SOL payload if it
appears the SOL payload has been stolen, but we did not
receive a SOL deactivating flag.
o In libipmiconsole, fix corner case in which session not closed
cleanly when DEACTIVATE_ONLY flag specified.
o In libipmiconsole, workaround bug in Dell Poweredge M605,
M610, and M915 where instance count of SOL is always returned
as 0.

See http://www.gnu.org/software/freeipmi/NEWS for full release details.

FSF Events: For a Free Digital Society

jrasata — 2012-02-07T14:28:10+00:00

Please fill out this form, so that we can contact you about future events in and around Singapore.

FSF Events: Free Software and Your Freedom

jrasata — 2012-02-07T14:26:32+00:00

The Free Software Movement campaigns for computer users' freedom to cooperate and control their own computing. The Free Software Movement developed the GNU operating system, typically used together with the kernel Linux, specifically to make these freedoms possible.

Please fill out this form, so that we can contact you about future events in and around Singapore.

health @ Savannah: GNU Health community keeps growing ! : New partner in India

Luis Falcon — 2012-02-06T22:20:21+00:00

Dear all

It's great to see how fast the GNU Health community is growing, not only in installations, but in companies and institutions delivering implementation and training.

The latest service and training provider is Serpent Consulting Services in India.

"Serpent Consulting Services feels immense pleasure to say that we are in partnership with Thymbra and supporting GNU Health" , said Jay Vora, Managing Director from Serpent CS.

So, now, besides de supporting governments (like Brazil or the European Community) and multilateral organizations (like United Nations ), there are private companies that are commited to Free Software in health care using GNU Health.

We'll be generating a map with all the service and training partners in the world, so you can choose the one closest to you.

This raise in the number of service and training providers show that Free Software is both ethical and a great business model.

Thank you to all the health professionals and the community at large that contribute with their talent in suggestions, questions, answers and bug reports.

Finally, our gratitude goes to the GNU project, Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation , for adopting GNU Health in their GNU System !

We fight for equity in health care. We deliver health and education with Free Software universally, and it would have been impossible without your contribution.

If you provide services around GNU Health and want your company to be shown in the services section of http://health.gnu.org send us a mail to health@gnusolidario.org and we'll be happy to publish it.

Remember that, as in today, GNU Health runs on Tryton ... just in case ;-)

All the best

Luis Falcon
President
GNU Solidario

FSF Events: Logiciel Libre, Société Libre et Solidaire

jrasata — 2012-02-06T15:30:54+00:00

Richard Stallman parlera des buts et de la philosophie du Mouvement du Logiciel Libre, ainsi que de l'histoire du système d'exploitation GNU, qui en combinaison avec le noyau Linux est aujourd’hui utilisé par des dizaines de millions d'utilisateurs dans le monde.

Veuillez remplir notre formulaire de contact, pour que nous puissions vous contacter au sujet d'événements à venir dans la région marseillaise.

GNUCash News: Announcement: GnuCash 2.4.10 Release

GnuCash Developers — 2012-02-06T06:00:00+00:00

GNOME Commit Digest: Issue 174

fredp — 2012-02-05T13:31:02+00:00

This week… 1611 commits, in 183 projects, by 205 happy hackers (and 216 were translation commits).

In gnome-themes-standard Lapo Calamandrei started using PNGs as assets where possible, instead of SVG files.
Many introspection improvements landed in gjs (support for interfaces, signals, glib properties…), Jasper St. Pierre blogged about GJS Improvements.
Matthias Clasen added a systemd implementation of the session tracking part of gnome-session . (GNOME bug 666891)
David King added an horizontal flip effect to gnome-video-effects . (GNOME bug 666930)
Jasper St. Pierre added back a “popularity” field to extensions.gnome.org.
Empathy was updated by Will Thompson to present confirmation dialogs when closing windows containing chat rooms . (GNOME bug 591756)
In gnumeric Andreas J. Guelzow fixed rich text import from xslx files . (GNOME bug 669083)
Faghmie Davids contributed many improvements to the Firebird provider of libgda.
In gnome-shell Owen Taylor improved the default screencast pipeline, decreasing the quality setting for the vp8 codec from 10 to 8, and increasing the speed setting from 2 to 6 . (GNOME bug 669066)
Stefano Palazzo contributed a Python 3 language file for gtksourceview . (GNOME bug 668136)
Alexander Larsson updated gnome-contacts to use a dialog for avatar changing.
Patricia Santana Cruz changed cheese to use PackageKit to install nautilus-sendto when needed; she wrote about this: PackageKit in Cheese . (GNOME bug 668072)
Damien Sandras reimplemented call control functions into the new Ekiga call window.
In gnome-games Robert Ancell ported uadrapassel from C++ to Vala.
Claudio Saavedra updated eog to hide the titlebar when maximized . (GNOME bug 668652)
In gedit Jesse van den Kieboom added an option to ensure that documents always end with a trailing newline.

Top projects

Project	Commits
gtk+	171
vala	68
baobab	62
gjs	55
evolution-data-server	50
glom	46
nautilus-actions	44
gnome-games	43
ostree	42
glib	41

Top authors

Author	Commits	Modules
Matthias Clasen	73	gtk+, glib, gnome-session and others
Jasper St. Pierre	71	gjs, extensions-web, gobject-introspection and others
Cosimo Cecchi	69	gtk+, gnome-themes-standard, nautilus and others
Daniel Mustieles	52	glabels, nautilus-actions, evolution-data-server and others
Colin Walters	50	ostree, ostree-init, gobject-introspection and others
Chao-Hsiung Liao	48	gnome-terminal, gnome-games, gtksourceview and others
Benjamin Otte	48	gtk+, gnome-themes-standard, glib
Murray Cumming	44	glom, libgda, libepc and others
Paolo Borelli	42	baobab, gtksourceview, gnome-themes-standard and others
Ryan Lortie	39	baobab, gnome-games, jhbuild and others

FSF Blogs: Stop ACTA in Europe, February 11th

mattl — 2012-02-03T20:26:39+00:00

Last week we told you of the ongoing move in Europe against ACTA — now coordinated protests are taking place across Europe on February 11th, and here's how you can get involved.

Read 'Signed, not sealed' and contact your country's Members of the European Parliment

Get involved!

Join the ACTA group on reddit where protests are being organized.
Read Stop ACTA in German or Stop ACTA in English.
Check out the ACTA Protest wiki for information on starting or joining a protest in your area.

If you're not in Europe, please help spread the word to people who are. Defeating it in Europe is the first step to ending it once and for all.

For a refresher on why ACTA threatens free software, see http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/acta and the impact of ACTA on medicines.

Thank you for speaking up against ACTA,

Matt, Josh and John

idutils @ Savannah: idutils-4.6 released [stable]

Jim Meyering — 2012-02-03T13:06:03+00:00

This is to announce a stable release of idutils.
The idutils package contains tools to create and efficiently search
an index of "identifiers" from specified files:

    http://www.gnu.org/software/idutils/

Since 4.5 there have been two bug fixes and some build and portability
improvements inherited via gnulib.  See the NEWS below for a summary.

Here are the compressed sources and a GPG detached signature[*]:
  http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/idutils/idutils-4.6.tar.xz
  http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/idutils/idutils-4.6.tar.xz.sig

Use a mirror for higher download bandwidth:
  http://ftpmirror.gnu.org/idutils/idutils-4.6.tar.xz

[*] Use a .sig file to verify that the corresponding file (without the
.sig suffix) is intact.  First, be sure to download both the .sig file
and the corresponding tarball.  Then, run a command like this:

  gpg --verify idutils-4.6.tar.xz.sig

If that command fails because you don't have the required public key,
then run this command to import it:

  gpg --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv-keys 7FD9FCCB000BEEEE

and rerun the 'gpg --verify' command.

This release was bootstrapped with the following tools:
  Autoconf 2.68.136-a1a00
  Automake 1.11a
  Gnulib v0.0-6862-g0eab6e2

NEWS

* Noteworthy changes in release 4.6 (2012-02-03) [stable]

** Bug fixes

  lid -L no longer mishandles open-ended ranges like "..2" and "2.."

  lid's -d, -o and -x options now work properly

FSF News: You did your part, now it's our turn to do more for you!

johns — 2012-02-02T04:03:21+00:00

Even better, we also exceeded our "behind the scenes" goal, which was to sign up at least 400 new members over the two months. I'm really thrilled to welcome so many new supporters, including our 423 new associate members.

On behalf of everyone here at the FSF, I'd like to thank all of you who donated and joined, and all of you who helped promote the effort through your networks. The amount of response this year was incredibly gratifying, and makes me feel extremely optimistic about what we can get done in the year ahead.

I'd specifically like to thank Mark Holmquist, who referred 15 of those 423 new members all by himself, our intern emeritus Danny Piccirillo who went above and beyond in getting the word out, Max and the gang from reddit, and everyone who donated $500 or more to appear on our ThankGNU list.

We had a lot of fun writing the fundraiser pieces this year describing the work of the different staff members here at the FSF, and how we could get more done in each area with increased financial support. We didn't get a chance to write about everyone yet (like, ahem, me!), but we'll pick up where we left off next time. Thank you to all of you who wrote to us with encouraging comments about this series of articles — of course we always worry about annoying our supporters by being too pushy, so it was very good to hear that the articles were worthwhile reading.

Now that you've given us a vote of confidence to do more for you, it's time for us to get to it!

You can keep tabs on our work by signing up for our monthly Free Software Supporter newsletter (along with occasional interim updates), and subscribing to our blogs RSS feed.

I hope to see all of you in person at LibrePlanet this March in Boston! And for anyone who will be at FOSDEM this weekend, look me up.

GNUnet News: Updated behavior of GNUNET_log

Bart Polot — 2012-02-01T18:25:58+00:00

It's currently quite common to see constructions like this all over the code:

#if MESH_DEBUG
  GNUNET_log (GNUNET_ERROR_TYPE_DEBUG,
    "MESH: client disconnected\n");
#endif

The reason for the #if is not to avoid displaying the message when disabled (GNUNET_ERROR_TYPE takes care of that), but to avoid the compiler including it in the binary at all, when compiling GNUnet for platforms with restricted storage space / memory (MIPS routers, ARM plug computers / dev boards, etc).

This presents several problems: the code gets ugly, hard to write and it is very easy to forget to include the #if guards, creating non-consistent code. A new change in GNUNET_log aims to solve these problems.

This change requires to ./configure with at least --enable-logging=verbose to see debug messages.

gnun @ Savannah: GNUnited Nations 0.5 released

Yavor Doganov — 2012-02-01T17:54:25+00:00

At last, GNUN 0.5 is available, after more than 2 years of development. See the release announcement at http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/trans-coord-news/2012-02/msg00000.html.

Andy Wingo: eval, that spectral hound

Andy Wingo — 2012-02-01T15:33:49+00:00

Friends, I am not a free man. Eval has been my companion of late, a hellhound on my hack-trail. I give you two instances.

the howl of the-environment, across the ages

As legend has it, in the olden days, Aubrey Jaffer, the duke of SCM, introduced low-level FEXPR-like macros into his Scheme implementation. These allowed users to capture the lexical environment:

(define the-environment
  (procedure->syntax
   (lambda (exp env)
     env)))

Tom Lord inherited this cursed bequest from Jaffer, when he established himself in the nearby earldom of Guile. It so affected him that he added local-eval to Guile, allowing the user to evaluate an expression within a captured local environment:

(define env (let ((x 10)) (the-environment)))
(local-eval 'x env)
=> 10
(local-eval '(set! x 42) env)
(local-eval 'x env)
=> 42

Since then, the tenants of the earldom of Guile have been haunted by this strange leakage of the state of the interpreter into the semantics of Guile.

When the Guile co-maintainer title devolved upon me, I had a plan to vanquish the hound: to compile Guile into fast bytecode. There would be no inefficient association-lists of bindings at run-time. Indeed, there would be no "environment object" to capture. I succeeded, and with Guile 2.0, local-eval, procedure->syntax and the-environment were no more.

But no. As Guile releases started to make it into distributions, and users started to update their code, there arose such a howling on the mailing lists as set my hair on end. The ghost of local-eval was calling: it would not be laid to rest.

I resisted fate, for as long as I could do so in good conscience. In the end, Guile hacker Mark Weaver led an expedition to the mailing list moor, and came back with a plan.

Mark's plan was to have the syntax expander recognize the-environment, and residualize a form that would capture the identities of all lexical bindings. Like this:

(let ((x 10)) (the-environment))
=>
(let ((x 10))
  (make-lexical-environment
   ;; Procedure to wrap captured environment around
   ;; an expression
   wrapper
   ;; Captured variables: only "x" in this case
   (list (capture x))))

I'm taking it a little slow because hey, this is some tricky macrology. Let's look at (capture x) first. How do you capture a variable? In Scheme, with a closure. Like this:

;; Capture a variable with a closure.
;;
(define-syntax-rule (capture var)
  (case-lambda
    ;; When called with no arguments, return the value
    ;; of VAR.
    (() var)
    ;; When called with one argument, set the VAR to the
    ;; new value.
    ((new-val) (set! var new-val))))

The trickier part is reinstating the environment, so that x in a local-eval'd expression results in the invocation of a closure. Identifier syntax to the rescue:

;; The wrapper from above: a procedure that wraps
;; an expression in a lexical environment containing x.
;;
(lambda (exp)
  #`(lambda (x*) ; x* is a fresh temporary var
      (let-syntax ((x (identifier-syntax
                        (_ (x*))
                        ((set! _ val) (x* val)))))
        #,exp)))

By now it's clear what local-eval does: it wraps an expression, using the wrapper procedure from the environment object, evaluates that expression, then calls the resulting procedure with the case-lambda closures that captured the lexical variable.

So it's a bit intricate and nasty in some places, but hey, it finally tames the ghostly hound with modern Scheme. We were able to build local-eval on top of Guile's procedural macros, once a couple of accessors were added to our expander to return the set of bound identifiers visible in an expression, and to query whether those bindings were regular lexicals, or macros, or pattern variables, or whatever.

"watson, your service revolver, please."

As that Guile discussion was winding down, I started to hear the howls from an unexpected quarter: JavaScript. You might have heard, perhaps, that JavaScript eval is crazy. Well, it is. But ES5 strict was meant to kill off its most egregious aspect, in which eval can introduce new local variables to a function.

Now I've been slowly hacking on implementing block-scoped let and const in JavaScriptCore, so that we can consider switching gnome-shell over to use JSC. Beyond standard ES5 supported in JSC, existing gnome-shell code uses let, const, destructuring binding, and modules, all of which are bound to be standardized in the upcoming ES6. So, off to the hack.

My initial approach was to produce a correct implementation, and then make it fast. But the JSC maintainers, inspired by the idea that "let is the new var", wanted to ensure that let was fast from the beginning, so that it doesn't get a bad name with developers. OK, fair enough!

Beyond that, though, it looks like TC39 folk are eager to get let and const into all parts of JavaScript, not just strict mode. Do you hear the hound? It rides again! Now we have to figure out how block scope interacts with non-strict eval. Awooooo!

Thankfully, there seems to be a developing consensus that eval("let x = 20") will not introduce a new block-scoped lexical. So, down boy. The hound is at bay, for now.

life with dogs

I'm making my peace with eval. Certainly in JavaScript it's quite a burden for an implementor, but the current ES6 drafts don't look like they're making the problem worse. And in Scheme, I'm very happy to provide the primitives needed so that local-eval can be implemented in terms of our existing machinery, without needing symbol tables at runtime. But if you are making a new language, as you value your life, don't go walking on the local-eval moors at night!

automake @ Savannah: Automake 1.11.3 released

Stefano Lattarini — 2012-02-01T13:39:24+00:00

GNU Automake 1.11.3 has been released. It is a maintenance release, containing mostly bug fixes and deprecations of obsolete features. But it also introduces a couple new minor features of its own (support for lzip compression of distribution tarballs and for the new EXTRA_foo_DEPENDENCIES variables).

Announcement for 1.11.3:
<http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/automake/2012-02/msg00000.html>

FSF Blogs: GNU spotlight with Karl Berry (January 2012)

mattl — 2012-02-01T04:06:57+00:00

In addition to the usual releases, a new installment of the Lilypond Report has been published. It includes release news, an interview, Prelude #1 in Scheme, and more.

To get announcements of most new GNU releases, subscribe to the info-gnu mailing list. Nearly all GNU software is available from ftp.gnu.org, or preferably one of its mirrors. You can use the URL ftpmirror.gnu.org/ to be automatically redirected to a (hopefully) nearby and up-to-date mirror.

Several GNU packages are looking for maintainers and other assistance. There's also a general page on how to help GNU, and information on how to submit new packages to GNU.

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

FSF Events: Free Software in Ethics and in Practice

jrasata — 2012-01-31T02:22:21+00:00

Richard Stallman will speak about the goals and philosophy of the Free Software Movement, and the status and history of the GNU operating system, which in combination with the kernel Linux is now used by tens of millions of users world-wide.

Please fill out this form, so that we can contact you about future events in and around Coimbatore.

FSF Events: A Free Digital Society

jrasata — 2012-01-31T02:10:04+00:00

Please fill out this form, so that we can contact you about future events in and around Kolkata.

FSF Events: Free Software and Your Freedom

jrasata — 2012-01-31T01:40:53+00:00

Please fill out this form, so that we can contact you about future events in and around Ghaziabad.

guile @ Savannah: GNU Guile 2.0.5 released

Ludovic Courtès — 2012-01-30T22:09:15+00:00

GNU Guile 2.0.5 was just released, to fix the incorrect binary interface information (SONAME) found in libguile in 2.0.4. It does not contain other changes.

Please be sure to upgrade to 2.0.5 if you already installed 2.0.4.
We apologize for the inconvenience.

Planet GNU

www @ Savannah: Registration Is Open!

FSF News: Announcing JavaScript License Web Labels

GNU MediaGoblin: MediaGoblin 0.2.1: Gearing Up

FSF Events: Por una sociedad digital libre

FSF Events: Copyright vs. Community

Paolo Carlini: C++11 tidbits: Non-static Data Member Initializers

Aleksander Morgado: FOSDEM talk slides online

Sylvain Beucler: Make sure glue isn't stripped

FSF News: Nominations are open for the 14th annual Free Software Awards

Award for the Advancement of Free Software

Award for Projects of Social Benefit

Eligibility

FSF Events: For a Free Digital Society

FSF Events: Rencontre avec Jean Pierre Berlan (agronome et économiste) et Richard Stallman

freeipmi @ Savannah: FreeIPMI 1.1.2 Released

FSF Events: For a Free Digital Society

FSF Events: Free Software and Your Freedom

health @ Savannah: GNU Health community keeps growing ! : New partner in India

FSF Events: Logiciel Libre, Société Libre et Solidaire

GNUCash News: Announcement: GnuCash 2.4.10 Release

GNOME Commit Digest: Issue 174

Top projects

Top authors

FSF Blogs: Stop ACTA in Europe, February 11th

Get involved!

idutils @ Savannah: idutils-4.6 released [stable]

FSF News: You did your part, now it's our turn to do more for you!

GNUnet News: Updated behavior of GNUNET_log

gnun @ Savannah: GNUnited Nations 0.5 released

Andy Wingo: eval, that spectral hound

automake @ Savannah: Automake 1.11.3 released

FSF Blogs: GNU spotlight with Karl Berry (January 2012)

New GNU releases this month:

FSF Events: Free Software in Ethics and in Practice

FSF Events: A Free Digital Society

FSF Events: Free Software and Your Freedom

guile @ Savannah: GNU Guile 2.0.5 released