Plenty of people want to get involved in open source, but don’t know where to start. Here are several ways to help out even if you lack confidence in your technical chops.

ESR writes about the perception of technologists on MPAA backed legislation such as SOPA/PIPA/ACTA. He tries to make it as clear as possible technologists will not have it. The internet and our computers will remain uncensored.

If you browse the Web today, your browser will probably download and run nonfree JavaScript software on your behalf. You should be able to say no to that software—but to date, that hasn't been practical. JavaScript License Web Labels are our newest effort to make this easier.

GNU Generation is an ongoing community and competition to involve pre-university and high school students (approximately age 13-18) in Free Software. Once registered, students work on a project. Each year, participants will be evaluated based on their contribution to Free Software. All active contributors will receive a complementary membership to the FSF, and the top contributors will win a GNU/Linux netbook! The community has currently 98 participants.

Yes, Microsoft is demanding — and in many cases, receiving royalties — from companies selling devices that run Android, an operating system based on Linux. This shows that its place in the world remains complicated. Though it’s moving to the web, it is still very much a company that makes money selling software — and it still has an interest in protecting this business.

For our January fellowship interview we met Heiki Ojasild. He joined the Free Software Foundation Europe in 2011, undertaking the task of translating fsfe.org into Estonian, his mother tongue. He is currently developing an XChat add-on, as well as a website for free SVG and JavaScript games. In 2010 he took part in the Baltic Olympiad in Informatics.

Schools should foster curiosity and the spirit enquiry in an environment that encourages students to learn. A classroom running proprietary software cannot provide this.

I believe in Synergy. One positive event feeds other positive events. The share of computer users who use Linux, GNU, and other Free Software is growing because people are actually starting to put some marketing muscle behind the concepts. Canonical is one of these companies. Red Hat is another. Google is also fighting the good fight.