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
responsibility thinking issues
Talking about freedom, about ethical issues, about responsibilities as well as convenience, is asking people to think about things they might prefer to ignore, such as whether their conduct is ethical. This can trigger discomfort, and some people may simply close their minds to it. It does not follow that we ought to stop talking about these things.
beer thinking speech
Think 'free speech,' not 'free beer.'
beer thinking liberty
Free software' is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of 'free' as in 'free speech,' not as in 'free beer'.
successful thinking justice
I don’t have a problem with someone using their talents to become successful, I just don’t think the highest calling is success. Things like freedom and the expansion of knowledge are beyond success, beyond the personal. Personal success is not wrong, but it is limited in importance, and once you have enough of it it is a shame to keep striving for that, instead of for truth, beauty, or justice.
thinking people trying
I'm trying to change the way people approach knowledge and information in general. I think that to try to own knowledge, to try to control whether people are allowed to use it, or to try to stop other people from sharing it, is sabotage.
thinking people alternatives
I never imagined that the Free Software Movement would spawn a watered-down alternative, the Open Source Movement, which would become so well-known that people would ask me questions about 'open source' thinking that I work under that banner.
thinking geek
Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone.
nasty sprung threats
The world has sprung very nasty threats on us and our software.
book british owns plan publishers record
British book publishers plan to put a microchip into every book to record who owns it - an unprecedented surveillance measure.
allow computing control deserve free freedom particular software users
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.
american-musician citizen good means mutual poorer reason
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.
developers impose monopolies patents
Software patents are dangerous to software developers because they impose monopolies on software ideas.
change divided forbidden helpless keeps power program since source study system unjust users
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.
browse button facebook knows machine page site visited web
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.