Free Software Supporter — Issue 222, October 2026

Welcome to the Free Software Supporter, the Free Software Foundation’s (FSF) monthly news digest and action update — being read by you and 238,400 other activists.

Join the FSF for EncryptFest on October 25
FSF comments on Newsom’s executive order on so-called artificial intelligence
Our adventures at HOPE 2026
Join us, we’re hiring!
GNU Boot joins FSF fiscal sponsorship program
What’s wrong with GitHub
YH4F: Italian pupils are now earning school credits for free software projects!
Denuvo sues game « cracker » voices38 for bypassing its « anti-tamper » DRM
LG accused of ‘egregious invasion of privacy’ over TV data collection
September GNU Emacs news
Join the FSF and friends in updating the Free Software Directory
LibrePlanet featured resource: Group: Hardware/Strategies/Reverse Engineering
September GNU Spotlight with Amin Bandali featuring seventeen new GNU releases: Coreutils, SCM, and more!
FSF and other free software events
Thank GNUs!
GNU copyright contributions
Translations of the Free Software Supporter
Take action with the FSF!

View this issue online here: https://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter/2026/october.

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Want to read this newsletter translated into another language? Scroll to the end to read the Supporter in French, Portuguese, or Spanish.

Join the FSF for EncryptFest on October 25

From September 23

We are excited to announce EncryptFest, a global encryption and privacy-focused event on Sunday, October 25, 2026. This gratis event is divided into two parts: First, there will be a talk and discussion featuring renowned experts on bulk surveillance, and how encryption protects personal privacy. Second, as a concrete step to enhance your data privacy, EncryptFest will include a hands-on workshop on encrypting your email using the FSF’s Email Self-Defense guide. You may join us virtually, or you can join us in-person at the Boston Public Library’s Copley Square branch in Boston, MA (the FSF’s home base) or at Yale Privacy Lab in New Haven, CT, both in the United States. Register today and tell your friends!

FSF comments on Newsom’s executive order on so-called artificial intelligence

From September 29

Recently, California governor Gavin Newsom issued an executive order to the California Government Operations agency. Gov. Newsom directed the agency to work with a panel of experts to investigate how feasible it would be to amend California state law in order to, among other things, mandate that the so-called artificial intelligence companies based in California include « kill switches » in their models, which would then be verified by an independent organization. If you are part of the Government Operations Agency, we urge you to consider the precedent that could be set, and ask you make recommendations to the governor in ways that puts the freedom and dignity of the individual user first and foremost.

https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/2026-comments-on-newsoms-california-executive-order

Our adventures at HOPE 2026

From September 28

We had a fantastic time at the HOPE 2026 conference in New York and wanted to take a moment to thank all the free software supporters who attended our talks and workshops, our meetup, or stopped by our table. We are very, very grateful to our volunteers who helped us during the conference and at our meetup, too. We also want to congratulate the organizers and other participants of HOPE 2026 for yet another successful HOPE. Five FSF staff members were at HOPE 2026, including newer program manager Heshan de Silva-Weeramuni. In this writeup, Heshan shared one of his first free software conference experiences with us, which you can read about below.

https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/2026-hope-adventures

Join us, we’re hiring!

From September 16

At the FSF, our daily work helps advance software freedom around the world, and we are looking for two new people to help us do just that! We are seeking an Engineering and Certification Manager who will take a leadership role in managing and growing the FSF’s Respect Your Freedom (RYF) Program. We also have an opening for a Systems Integration Administrator who will work closely with the rest of the tech team in planning and managing the FSF’s systems deployment, interoperability, and security strategies. We can’t wait to meet you — apply today!

GNU Boot joins FSF fiscal sponsorship program

From September 14

GNU Boot, founded in 2022 by Denis « GNUtoo » Carikli and Adrien « neox » Bourmault, is officially the FSF’s latest fiscally sponsored project. GNU Boot is a libre, ethical replacement for the nonfree BIOS or UEFI, software that is found in virtually all personal computers in the world today. The long-term goal for GNU Boot is to allow users and contributors to rely on GNU Boot without requiring them to learn domain-specific skills. The work of GNU Boot contributors is similar to work done by GNU/Linux distributions: they package software like Coreboot or GNU GRUB, contribute to the upstream repositories of these projects, and assist them with documentation, among other tasks. You can read more about, and donate to, this exciting project below.

What’s wrong with GitHub

From September 14 by Jacob Bachmeyer and Richard Stallman

GitHub, a proprietary developer website for building, storing, managing, and sharing code, is not as neutral of a site as it might first appear. While there are likely other issues with GitHub, the main freedom-related problems are as follows: promotion of vague and confusing licensing practices; forced use of nonfree JavaScript for many actions; a variety of service as a software substitute (SaaSS) dis-services; and intentional centralization in a distributed system. If you or someone you know uses GitHub, we encourage you to educate yourself and others about why GitHub is harmful to software freedom.

YH4F: Italian pupils are now earning school credits for free software projects!

From September 14 by the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE)

Starting in 2026, the FSFE’s programming competition, Youth Hacking 4 Freedom (YH4F) is part of the Educational Pathways for Transversal Skills and Students Orientation (PCTO) in Italy. The PCTO is an Italian educational program designed to help secondary school students gain practical experience through real-world projects and professional activities. Thanks to the hard work of Italian FSFE volunteer and school teacher Giacomo Alessandroni, Italian students can now earn credit for their extra curriculum while developing free software projects (including competing in YH4F). If you’re a teacher, student, or parent of a student, advocate for incorporating free software in your educational environment.

Denuvo sues game « cracker » voices38 for bypassing its « anti-tamper » DRM

From September 16 by Ernesto Van der Sar

Denuvo, the company behind the digital restrictions management (DRM) software of the same name, is suing an anonymous game « cracker » by the username « voices38 » for bypassing its ‘Anti-Tamper’ technology in twenty-six games, an alleged violation of the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provision. A ruling in Denuvo’s favor could act as confirmation that Denuvo can directly sue anyone who attempts to exercise their user freedom. The FSF does not condone piracy, but we certainly do not condone DRM of any kind that only seeks to control users of software or devices that should be fully theirs after purchase, as should have been the case for the games that voices38 bought. If you’re a game developer (or any other software developer), we strongly encourage you to release your game or program under a free license and avoid use of DRM.

LG accused of ‘egregious invasion of privacy’ over TV data collection

From September 8 by Connor Jones

According to researchers with Gamers Nexus, LG « smart » TVs were recently caught scanning local networks and identifying devices that had never been connected to the TV, including phones, printers, air conditioning units, and the list goes on. These researchers also reported that these « smart » TVs continue to capture audio long after voice recognition is activated, including when the device is in standby. LG dismissed these claims, and even stated that it’s « normal » for « smart » TVs to continuously scan for nearby devices. The commonality of this issue cannot be used to condone this serious breach of privacy and user rights. You can learn more about how LG might be infringing upon user rights in the article below.

August GNU Emacs news

From September 30 by Sacha Chua

In these issues: guide to deferred package loading with use-package, creating beautiful diagrams in Emacs using d2, and more!

Join the FSF and friends in updating the Free Software Directory

Tens of thousands of people visit directory.fsf.org each month to discover free software. Each entry in the Directory contains a wealth of useful information, from basic categorization and descriptions to version control, IRC channels, documentation, and licensing. The Free Software Directory has been a great resource to software users over the past decade, but it needs your help staying up to date with new and exciting free software projects.

To help, join our weekly IRC meetings on Fridays. Meetings take place in the #fsf channel on Libera.Chat and usually include a handful of regulars as well as newcomers. Libera.Chat is accessible from any IRC client — everyone’s welcome!

The next meeting is this Friday, October 2 from 12:00 to 15:00 EDT (16:00 to 19:00 UTC). Details here: https://www.fsf.org/events/fsd-2026-10-02-irc

https://directory.fsf.org/wiki/Main_Page

LibrePlanet featured resource: Group: Hardware/Strategies/Reverse Engineering

Every month on the LibrePlanet wiki, we highlight one resource that is interesting and useful — often one that could use your help. This month, we are highlighting Group: Hardware/Strategies/Reverse Engineering. Hardware usually requires accompanying software to function, typically in the form of drivers or firmware. However, when this software is proprietary, the hardware is useless to the free world. In order to liberate such hardware, it must be reverse-engineered after careful consideration of different options. This page proposes criteria and examples for what hardware should be prioritized for liberation. You are invited to help update, adopt, spread, and improve this important resource.

https://libreplanet.org/wiki/Group:Hardware/Strategies/ReverseEngineering

Do you have a suggestion for next month’s featured resource? Let us know at campaigns@fsf.org.

September GNU Spotlight with Amin Bandali featuring seventeen new GNU releases: Coreutils, SCM, and more!

Seventeen new GNU releases in the last month (as of September 30, 2026):

For a full list with descriptions, please see: https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/2026-september-gnu-spotlight.

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 most reliably from https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/. Optionally, you may find faster download speeds at a mirror located geographically closer to you by choosing from the list of mirrors published at https://www.gnu.org/prep/ftp.html, or you may use https://ftpmirror.gnu.org/ to be automatically redirected to a (hopefully) nearby and up-to-date mirror.

This month, we welcome back Jason Self as the new maintainer of librejs. We also welcome Collin Funk as a new co-maintainer of coreutils, and Jean-Francois Dockes as a new co-maintainer of unrtf. Welcome aboard, and thank you all!

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 me, bandali@gnu.org, with any GNUish questions or suggestions for future installments.

FSF and other free software events

October 2–4, 2026 in Prague, Czechia GNU Tools Cauldron
October 19–20, 2026 in Raleigh, North Carolina, United States ATO
October 23–24, 2026 in Seattle, Washington, United States SeaGL
October 25, 2026 in Boston, Massachusetts, United States EncryptFest

Thank GNUs!

We appreciate everyone who donates to the FSF, and we’d like to give special recognition to the folks who have donated $500 or more in the last month.

https://www.gnu.org/thankgnus/2026supporters.html

This month, a big Thank GNU to:

Antonio Carzaniga
Holger Weisbrodt
Jacob Sowder
Mark Driscoll
Yidong Chong

You can add your name to this list by donating at https://donate.fsf.org/.

GNU copyright contributions

Assigning your copyright to the FSF helps us defend the GNU GPL and keep software free. The following individuals have assigned their copyright to the FSF (and allowed public appreciation) in the past month:

Arun Bhattacharya (GNU Coreutils)
Léa Gris (GNU Bash)

Want to see your name on this list? Contribute to GNU and assign your copyright to the FSF.

https://www.gnu.org/server/takeaction.html#dev

Translations of the Free Software Supporter

El Free Software Supporter está disponible en español. Para ver la versión en español haz click aquí: https://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter/2026/octubre

Para cambiar las preferencias de usuario y recibir los próximos números del Supporter en español, haz click aquí: https://my.fsf.org/civicrm/profile/create?reset=1&gid=34&id={contact.contact_id}&{contact.checksum}

Le Free Software Supporter est disponible en français. Pour voir la version française cliquez ici: https://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter/2026/octobre

Pour modifier vos préférences et recevoir les prochaines publications du Supporter en français, cliquez ici: https://my.fsf.org/civicrm/profile/create?reset=1&gid=34&id={contact.contact_id}&{contact.checksum}

O Free Software Supporter está disponível em português. Para ver a versão em português, clique aqui: https://www.fsf.org/free-software-supporter/2026/outubro

Para alterar as preferências do usuário e receber as próximas edições do Supporter em português, clique aqui: https://my.fsf.org/civicrm/profile/create?reset=1&gid=34&id={contact.contact_id}&{contact.checksum}

If you no longer wish to receive the Free Software Supporter in English (but still receive other communications in English), you can opt out here.

Take action with the FSF!

Contributions from thousands of individual associate members enable the FSF’s work. You can contribute by joining at https://my.fsf.org/join. If you’re already an associate member, you can help refer new members by adding a line with your associate member number to your email signature like:

I’m an FSF associate member — Help us support software freedom! https://my.fsf.org/join

The FSF is always looking for volunteers. From rabble-rousing to hacking, from issue coordination to envelope stuffing — there »s something here for everybody to do. Also, head over to our campaigns section and take action on software patents, Digital Restrictions Management, free software adoption, OpenDocument, and more.

Do you read and write Portuguese and English? The FSF is looking for translators for the Free Software Supporter. Please send an email to campaigns@fsf.org with your interest and a list of your experience and qualifications.