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
real writing people
The principal lesson of Emacs is that a language for extensions should not be a mere "extension language". It should be a real programming language, designed for writing and maintaining substantial programs. Because people will want to do that!
wall writing years
I could have made money this way, and perhaps amused myself writing code. But I knew that at the end of my career, I would look back on years of building walls to divide people, and feel I had spent my life making the world a worse place.
writing skills done
I have met bright students in computer science who have never seen the source code of a large program. They may be good at writing small programs, but they can't begin to learn the different skills of writing large ones if they can't see how others have done it.
writing justified software
You know, if you were *really* going to starve, you'd be justified in writing proprietary software.
running writing people
Writing non-free software is not an ethically legitimate activity, so if people who do this run into trouble, that's good! All businesses based on non-free software ought to fail, and the sooner the better.
writing names giving
GNU, which stands for Gnu's Not Unix, is the name for the complete Unix-compatible software system which I am writing so that I can give it away free to everyone who can use it.
writing evil trying
If in my lifetime the problem of non-free software is solved, I could perhaps relax and write software again. But I might instead try to help deal with the world's larger problems. Standing up to an evil system is exhilarating, and now I have a taste for it.
new-york writing violence
I have not seen anyone assume that all the citizens of New York are guilty of murder, violence, robbery, perjury, or writing proprietary software.
writing technology law
While corporations dominate society and write the laws, each advance in technology is an opening for them to further restrict its users.
writing mean simple
It is hard to write a simple definition of something as varied as hacking, but I think what these activities have in common is playfulness, cleverness, and exploration. Thus, hacking means exploring the limits of what is possible, in a spirit of playful cleverness. Activities that display playful cleverness have "hack value".
writing islands java
I did write some code in Java once, but that was the island in Indonesia.
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.