Richard Stallman
Richard Stallman
Richard Matthew Stallman, often known by his initials, rms, is an American software freedom activist and programmer. He campaigns for software to be distributed in a manner such that its users receive the freedoms to use, study, distribute and modify that software. Software that ensures these freedoms is termed free software. Stallman launched the GNU Project, founded the Free Software Foundation, developed the GNU Compiler Collection and GNU Emacs, and wrote the GNU General Public License...
ProfessionEntrepreneur
Date of Birth16 March 1953
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The world has sprung very nasty threats on us and our software.
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British book publishers plan to put a microchip into every book to record who owns it - an unprecedented surveillance measure.
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The idea of free software is that users of computing deserve freedom. They deserve in particular to have control over their computing. And proprietary software does not allow users to have control of their computing.
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The reason that a good citizen does not use such destructive means to become wealthier is that, if everyone did so, we would all become poorer from the mutual destructiveness.
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Software patents are dangerous to software developers because they impose monopolies on software ideas.
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Proprietary software keeps users divided and helpless. Divided because each user is forbidden to redistribute it to others, and helpless because the users can't change it since they don't have the source code. They can't study what it really does. So the proprietary program is a system of unjust power.
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Facebook mistreats its users. Facebook is not your friend; it is a surveillance engine. For instance, if you browse the Web and you see a 'like' button in some page or some other site that has been displayed from Facebook. Therefore, Facebook knows that your machine visited that page.
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With paper printed books, you have certain freedoms. You can acquire the book anonymously by paying cash, which is the way I always buy books. I never use a credit card. I don't identify to any database when I buy books. Amazon takes away that freedom.
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When I launched the development of the GNU system, I explicitly said the purpose of developing this system is so we can use our computers and have freedom, thus if you use some other free system instead but you have freedom, then it's a success. It's not popularity for our code but it's success for our goal.
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I found it tremendously humiliating to be there because most of the kids there were brain dead or psychotic.
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I founded the free software movement, a movement for freedom to cooperate. Open source was a reaction against our idealism. We are still here and the open-source people have not wiped us out.
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CD stores have the disadvantage of an expensive inventory, but digital bookshops would need no such thing: they could write copies at the time of sale on to memory sticks, and sell you one if you forgot your own.
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Many users of the GNU/Linux system will not have heard the ideas of free software. They will not be aware that we have ideas, that a system exists because of ethical ideals, which were omitted from ideas associated with the term 'open source.'
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One basis for society is that of helping your neighbor -- but in the software world this is piracy. To prevent this, the U.S. is putting in place practices which are like those in the former Soviet Union -- computerized guards, propaganda in favor of licensing, rewards for informing on co-workers, and penalties which make distributing software as serious a crime as armed robbery.