GNU Spotlight September 2023

Twelve new GNU releases in the last month (as of September 29, 2023):

• anastasis-0.4.0: GNU Anastasis is a free software protocol and implementation that allows users to securely deposit core secrets with a public set of escrow providers, and allows users to recover these secrets if their original copies are lost.
• gama-2.25.1: GNU Gama is a program for the adjustment of geodetic networks. It is useful in measurements where Global Positioning System (GPS) is not available, such as underground. It features the ability to adjust in local Cartesian coordinates as well as partial support for adjustments in global coordinate systems.
• gettext-0.22.2: GNU Gettext is a package providing a framework for translating the textual output of programs into multiple languages. It provides translators with the means to create message catalogs, as well as an Emacs mode to work with them, and a runtime library to load translated messages from the catalogs. Nearly all GNU packages use Gettext.
• g-golf-0.8.0-alpha-6: G-Golf (Gnome: (Guile Object Library for)) is a library for developing modern applications in Guile Scheme. It comprises a direct binding to the GObject Introspection API and higher-level functionality for importing Gnome libraries and making GObject classes (and methods) available in Guile's object-oriented programming system, GOOPS.
• gnunet-0.20.0: GNUnet is a framework for secure peer-to-peer networking. The high-level goal is to provide a strong foundation of free software for a global, distributed network that provides security and privacy. GNUnet in that sense aims to replace the current internet protocol stack. Along with an application for secure publication of files, it has grown to include all kinds of basic applications for the foundation of a GNU internet.
• health-4.2.3: GNU Health is a free medical software system, including support for electronic medical records (EMR), a hospital information system (HIS), and health information system. It supports both Spanish and English interfaces. It has been adopted by the United Nations University for implementation and training, as well as by several hospitals and health ministries around the world.
• librejs-7.21.1: LibreJS is an add-on for GNU Icecat and other Firefox-based browsers. It detects non-trivial and non-free JavaScript code from being loaded without your consent when you browse the web. JavaScript code that is free or trivial is allowed to be loaded.
• mygnuhealth-2.0.0: MyGNUHealth is the GNU Health Personal Health Record (PHR) application for desktop and mobile devices and integrates with the GNU Health Federation. MyGNUHealth is a privacy-oriented PHR that puts citizens and patients in control of their health and medical information, and enhances and improves the interaction between citizens and healthcare professionals with up-to-date information on demographics and medical information.
• parallel-20230922: GNU Parallel is a tool for executing shell jobs in parallel using one or more computers. Jobs can consist of single commands or of scripts and they are executed on lists of files, hosts, users or other items.
• taler-0.9.3: Taler provides a payment system that makes privacy-friendly online transactions fast and easy.
• unifont-15.1.02: GNU Unifont is a bitmap font covering essentially all of Unicode's Basic Multilingual Plane. The package also includes utilities to ease adding new glyphs to the font.
• wget2-2.1.0: GNU Wget is a non-interactive tool for fetching files using the HTTP, HTTPS and FTP protocols. It can resume interrupted downloads, use file name wild cards, supports proxies and cookies, and it can convert absolute links in downloaded documents to relative links.

Also, the GNU Boot maintainers have published its first release candidate, and are calling for help for testing, initially from folks who could recover from computers that don't boot anymore. If you have the needed skills for rescuing your system from a non-booting state and want to help test the GNU Boot release candidate please see the https://savannah.gnu.org/news/?id=10509 for the announcement and https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/gnuboot/ for the downloads.

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 geographically close 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.

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.

September 27 this year marked the fortieth anniversary of Richard Stallman's initial announcement of the plan to develop the GNU operating system to give users freedom in their computing. There was a special GNU Hackers' Meeting on September 27 in Switzerland, featuring presentations about various GNU packages, hacking, and free software and its critical importance in our societies now and going into the future. The video recordings and presentation slides are available from https://www.gnu.org/gnu40/.

Finally, I regret to report we learned that Thien-Thi Nguyen (ttn) died in October 2022. Thien-Thi was a hacker, artist, writer, and long-time maintainer and contributor to many GNU programs as well as other free software packages. He was the GNU maintainer of the rcs, guile-sdl, alive, and superopt packages, and he was working on GNU Go as well. Thien-Thi especially loved GNU Emacs, GNU Taler, and GNU Go: he was the author and maintainer of the gnugo, ascii-art-to-unicode, and xpm GNU Emacs packages, and made substantial contributions to many others such as vc, as well as to GNU Taler and its documentation.

We greatly miss Thien-Thi in the free software community — his death is a great loss to the Free World. This edition of GNU Spotlight is dedicated to the memory of Thien-Thi.

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