today's free software leftovers

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The Apache Weekly News Round-up: week ending 10 December 2021
ASF Board – management and oversight of the business affairs of the corporation in accordance with the Foundation's bylaws.
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LibreOffice Community Member Monday: Ravi Dwivedi
I am from India, and I recently received my masters degree (M.Math) in mathematics from the Indian Statistical Institute in Kolkata. I am looking forward to doing a PhD in mathematics. My hobbies include listening to music, reading novels, playing chess, and meeting new people.
I campaign that software must respect users’ freedom. We call such a software free software, where ‘free’ refers to freedom and not price. In Indian languages, we call it “swatantra/mukt software” to remove the confusion. Free Software gives users the freedom to run, study, modify, share and improve the software. If the software lacks any of these freedoms, it is called non-free/proprietary software.
In my computing, I use only free software, except for some blobs in my phone. I volunteer for the Free Software Community for India. (FSCI). FSCI is not a registered organization, but a community of free software activists. It is also a non-hierarichal group. I raise awareness on why free software is important and the dangers of non-free/proprietary software.
[...]
I meet people on streets, trains, buses and wherever I find the opportunity – and I talk about the issue of free software and privacy. Usually, I try to understand what issues other people care about, and then relate digital privacy and free software with their issue.
For example, once a bookseller told me how people have stopped buying from physical bookstores, especially in COVID times, and instead buy books online from Amazon. I understood their issues and I told them that I never bought from Amazon even once (after June 2020) because ordering from Amazon puts me under surveillance. This way, I related the issues of privacy and free software with the ones they already care about. This is one good way to explain people.
Even when people don’t care, I tell them about these issues because it might be their first trigger, and they might need several triggers to consider the idea. I hope to raise some questions in people’s minds rather than convincing them. Also, I need to remind myself time and again that we cannot convince everyone that they should care for privacy. Apparently, it is a hard change to bring in today’s world and therefore, even small changes (like convincing and installing a few free software apps in their device) requires a lot of hard work.
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digiKam 7.7.0 is released
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Dilution and Misuse of the "Linux" Brand
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Samsung, Red Hat to Work on Linux Drivers for Future Tech
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today's howtos
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