News: 0001582430

  ARM Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life (Terry Pratchett, Jingo)

Free Software Foundation Names New President

([Free Software] 6 Hours Ago FSF New President)


A new Free Software Foundation president has been elected.

Geoffrey Knauth had been serving as president of the FSF since 2020 following the resignation of Richard Stallman. Knauth confirmed back in 2021 he would step down from his leadership role once there was a suitable replacement, which has now taken place.

The Free Software Foundation's board has confirmed Ian Kelling as its next president:

"The Free Software Foundation (FSF) announced today that Ian Kelling, senior systems administrator for the organization and the first union member to hold a seat on its board, has been elected as the new president of the FSF.

The FSF board members unanimously confirmed Kelling as president at a September meeting, making him the first staff member to hold the volunteer leadership position."

Those wanting to learn more can do so at [1]FSF.org .



[1] https://www.fsf.org/news/2025-ian-kelling-becomes-board-president


Attack of the Tuxissa Virus

What started out as a prank posting to comp.os.linux.advocacy yesterday has
turned into one of the most significant viruses in computing history.
The creator of the virus, who goes by the moniker "Anonymous Longhair",
modified the Melissa virus to install Linux on infected machines.

"It's a work of art," one Linux advocate told Humorix after he looked
through the Tuxissa virus source code. "This virus goes well beyond the
feeble troublemaking of Melissa. It actually configures a UMSDOS partition
on the user's hard drive and then downloads and installs a stripped-down
version of Slackware Linux."

The email message that the virus is attached to has the subject "Important
Message About Windows Security". The text of the body says, "I want to let
you know about some security problems I've uncovered in Windows 95/98/NT,
Office 95/97, and Outlook. It's critically important that you protect your
system against these attacks. Visit these sites for more information..."
The rest of the message contains 42 links to sites about Linux and free
software.

Details on how the virus started are a bit sketchy. The "Anonymous
Longhair" who created it only posted it to Usenet as an early April Fool's
gag, demonstrating how easy it would be to mount a "Linux revolution".