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{{Short description|American free software activist and GNU Project founder (born 1953)}}{{Use American English|date=February 2020}}{{Use mdy dates|date=September 2021|cs1-dates=y}}{{Use list-defined references|date=July 2022}}{{redirect|Stallman|the flutist|Robert Stallman|the speculative fiction author|Robert Lester Stallman}}

factoids

| birth_place = New York City, New York, US| other_names = rms (RMS)Harvard University (Bachelor of Science)>Massachusetts Institute of Technology (attended)}}Activist|programmer}}| title = Free software movementGNU>GNU EmacsGNU Compiler Collection>GNU General Public Licensecopyleft>Free Software Foundation}}| awards = {hide}ubl }}Richard Matthew Stallman ({{IPAc-en|ˈ|s|t|ɔː|l|m|ən}} {{respell|STAWL|mən}}; born March 16, 1953), also known by his initials, rms, is an American free software movement activist and programmer. He campaigns for software to be distributed in such a manner that its users have the freedom 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 (FSF) in October 1985, developed the GNU Compiler Collection and GNU Emacs, and wrote all versions of the GNU General Public License.Stallman launched the GNU Project in September 1983 to write a Unix-like computer operating system composed entirely of free software. With this, he also launched the free software movement. He has been the GNU project's lead architect and organizer, and developed a number of pieces of widely used GNU software including, among others, the GNU Compiler Collection, GNU Debugger, and GNU Emacs text editor.Stallman pioneered the concept of copyleft, which uses the principles of copyright law to preserve the right to use, modify, and distribute free software. He is the main author of free software licenses which describe those terms, most notably the GNU General Public License (GPL), the most widely used free software license.In 1989, he co-founded the League for Programming Freedom. Since the mid-1990s, Stallman has spent most of his time advocating for free software, as well as campaigning against software patents, digital rights management (which he refers to as digital restrictions management, calling the more common term misleading), and other legal and technical systems which he sees as taking away users' freedoms. This has included software license agreements, non-disclosure agreements, activation keys, dongles, copy restriction, proprietary formats, and binary executables without source code.In September 2019, Stallman resigned as president of the FSF and left his visiting scientist role at MIT after making controversial comments about the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking scandal. Stallman remained head of the GNU Project, and in 2021 returned to the FSF board of directors.

Early life

Stallman was born March 16, 1953, in New York City, to a family of Jewish heritage. He had a troublesome relationship with his parents and did not feel he had a proper home. He was interested in computers at a young age; when Stallman was a pre-teen at a summer camp, he read manuals for the IBM 7094. From 1967 to 1969, Stallman attended a Columbia University Saturday program for high school students. Stallman was also a volunteer laboratory assistant in the biology department at Rockefeller University. Although he was interested in mathematics and physics, his supervising professor at Rockefeller thought he showed promise as a biologist.His first experience with actual computers was at the IBM New York Scientific Center when he was in high school. He was hired for the summer in 1970, following his senior year of high school, to write a numerical analysis program in Fortran. He completed the task after a couple of weeks ("I swore that I would never use FORTRAN again because I despised it as a language compared with other languages") and spent the rest of the summer writing a text editor in APL and a preprocessor for the PL/I programming language on the IBM System/360.

Harvard University and MIT

As a first-year student at Harvard University in fall 1970, Stallman was known for his strong performance in Math 55. He was happy: "For the first time in my life, I felt I had found a home at Harvard."In 1971, near the end of his first year at Harvard, he became a programmer at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and became a regular in the hacker community, where he was usually known by his initials, RMS, which he used in his computer accounts. Stallman received a bachelor's degree in physics (magna cum laude) from Harvard in 1974.Stallman considered staying on at Harvard, but instead decided to enroll as a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He pursued a doctorate in physics for one year, but left that program to focus on his programming at the MIT AI Laboratory.While working (starting in 1975) as a research assistant at MIT under Gerry Sussman, Stallman published a paper (with Sussman) in 1977 on an AI truth maintenance system, called dependency-directed backtracking. This paper was an early work on the problem of intelligent backtracking in constraint satisfaction problems. {{As of|2009}},{{needs update|date=June 2022}} the technique Stallman and Sussman introduced is still the most general and powerful form of intelligent backtracking. The technique of constraint recording, wherein partial results of a search are recorded for later reuse, was also introduced in this paper.As a hacker in MIT's AI laboratory, Stallman worked on software projects such as TECO and Emacs for the Incompatible Timesharing System (ITS), as well as the Lisp machine operating system (the CONS of 1974–1976 and the CADR of 1977–1979—this latter unit was commercialized by Symbolics and Lisp Machines, Inc. (LMI) starting around 1980). He would become an ardent critic of restricted computer access in the lab, which at that time was funded primarily by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). When MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) installed a password control system in 1977, Stallman found a way to decrypt the passwords and sent users messages containing their decoded password, with a suggestion to change it to the empty string (that is, no password) instead, to re-enable anonymous access to the systems. Around 20 percent of the users followed his advice at the time, although passwords ultimately prevailed. Stallman boasted of the success of his campaign for many years afterward.

Events leading to GNU

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the hacker culture that Stallman thrived on began to fragment. To prevent software from being used on their competitors' computers, most manufacturers stopped distributing source code and began using copyright and restrictive software licenses to limit or prohibit copying and redistribution. Such proprietary software had existed before, and it became apparent that it would become the norm. This shift in the legal characteristics of software was a consequence triggered by the US Copyright Act of 1976.When Brian Reid in 1979 placed time bombs in the Scribe markup language and word processing system to restrict unlicensed access to the software, Stallman proclaimed it "a crime against humanity". During an interview in 2008, he clarified that it is blocking the user's freedom that he believes is a crime, not the issue of charging for software. Stallman's texinfo is a GPL replacement, loosely based on Scribe; the original version was finished in 1986.In 1980, Stallman and some other hackers at the AI Lab were refused access to the source code for the software of a newly installed laser printer, the Xerox 9700. Stallman had modified the software for the Lab's previous laser printer (the XGP, Xerographic Printer), so it electronically messaged a user when the person's job was printed, and would message all logged-in users waiting for print jobs if the printer was jammed. Not being able to add these features to the new printer was a major inconvenience, as the printer was on a different floor from most of the users. This experience convinced Stallman of people's need to be able to freely modify the software they use.Richard Greenblatt, a fellow AI Lab hacker, founded Lisp Machines, Inc. (LMI) to market Lisp machines, which he and Tom Knight designed at the lab. Greenblatt rejected outside investment, believing that the proceeds from the construction and sale of a few machines could be profitably reinvested in the growth of the company. In contrast, the other hackers felt that the venture capital-funded approach was better. As no agreement could be reached, hackers from the latter camp founded Symbolics, with the aid of Russ Noftsker, an AI Lab administrator. Symbolics recruited most of the remaining hackers including notable hacker Bill Gosper, who then left the AI Lab. Symbolics also forced Greenblatt to resign by citing MIT policies. While both companies delivered proprietary software, Stallman believed that LMI, unlike Symbolics, had tried to avoid hurting the lab's community. For two years, from 1982 to the end of 1983, Stallman worked by himself to clone the output of the Symbolics programmers, with the aim of preventing them from gaining a monopoly on the lab's computers.Stallman argues that software users should have the freedom to share with their neighbors and be able to study and make changes to the software that they use. He maintains that attempts by proprietary software vendors to prohibit these acts are antisocial and unethical. The phrase "software wants to be free" is often incorrectly attributed to him, and Stallman argues that this is a misstatement of his philosophy. He argues that freedom is vital for the sake of users and society as a moral value, and not merely for pragmatic reasons such as possibly developing technically superior software. Eric S. Raymond, one of the creators of the open-source movement, argues that moral arguments, rather than pragmatic ones, alienate potential allies and hurt the end goal of removing code secrecy.In February 1984, Stallman quit his job at MIT to work full-time on the GNU project, which he had announced in September 1983. Since then, he had remained affiliated with MIT as an unpaid "visiting scientist" in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Until "around 1998", he maintained an office at the Institute that doubled as his legal residence.

GNU project

Stallman announced the plan for the GNU operating system in September 1983 on several ARPANET mailing lists and USENET. He started the project on his own and describes: "As an operating system developer, I had the right skills for this job. So even though I could not take success for granted, I realized that I was elected to do the job. I chose to make the system compatible with Unix so that it would be portable, and so that Unix users could easily switch to it."File:Richard Stallman 00.jpg|thumb|left|Stallman in 2003 at the opening ceremony of NIXAL (a GLUG) at Netaji Subhash Engineering CollegeNetaji Subhash Engineering CollegeIn 1985, Stallman published the GNU Manifesto, which outlined his motivation for creating a free operating system called GNU, which would be compatible with Unix. The name GNU is a recursive acronym for "GNU's Not Unix". Soon after, he started a nonprofit corporation called the Free Software Foundation to employ free software programmers and provide a legal infrastructure for the free software movement. Stallman was the nonsalaried president of the FSF, which is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded in Massachusetts.Stallman popularized the concept of copyleft, a legal mechanism to protect the modification and redistribution rights for free software. It was first implemented in the GNU Emacs General Public License, and in 1989 the first program-independent GNU General Public License (GPL) was released. By then, much of the GNU system had been completed.Stallman was responsible for contributing many necessary tools, including a text editor (GNU Emacs), compiler (GCC), debugger (GNU Debugger), and a build automator (GNU make). The notable omission was a kernel. In 1990, members of the GNU project began using Carnegie Mellon's Mach microkernel in a project called GNU Hurd, which has yet to achieve the maturity level required for full POSIX compliance.In 1991, Linus Torvalds, a Finnish student, used the GNU's development tools to produce the free monolithic Linux kernel. The existing programs from the GNU project were readily ported to run on the resultant platform. Most sources use the name Linux to refer to the general-purpose operating system thus formed, while Stallman and the FSF call it GNU/Linux. This has been a longstanding naming controversy in the free software community. Stallman argues that not using GNU in the name of the operating system unfairly disparages the value of the GNU project and harms the sustainability of the free software movement by breaking the link between the software and the free software philosophy of the GNU project.Stallman's influences on hacker culture include the name POSIX and the Emacs editor. On Unix systems, GNU Emacs's popularity rivaled that of another editor vi, spawning an editor war. Stallman's take on this was to canonize himself as St. IGNUcius of the Church of Emacs and acknowledge that "vi vi vi is the editor of the beast", while "using a free version of vi is not a sin; it is a penance".In 1992, developers at Lucid Inc. doing their own work on Emacs clashed with Stallman and ultimately forked the software into what would become XEmacs. The technology journalist Andrew Leonard has characterized what he sees as Stallman's uncompromising stubbornness as common among elite computer programmers:{{blockquote|There's something comforting about Stallman's intransigence. Win or lose, Stallman will never give up. He'll be the stubbornest mule on the farm until the day he dies. Call it fixity of purpose, or just plain cussedness, his single-minded commitment and brutal honesty are refreshing in a world of spin-meisters and multimillion-dollar marketing campaigns.}}In 2018, Stallman instituted "Kind Communication Guidelines" for the GNU project to help its mailing list discussions remain constructive while avoiding explicitly promoting diversity.In October 2019, a public statement signed by 33 maintainers of the GNU project asserted that Stallman's behaviour had "undermined a core value of the GNU project: the empowerment of all computer users" and called for "GNU maintainers to collectively decide about the organization of the project". The statement was published soon after Stallman resigned as president of the FSF and left his "visiting scientist" role at MIT in September 2019. In spite of that, Stallman remained head of the GNU project.

Activism

Stallman has written many essays on software freedom, and has been an outspoken political campaigner for the free software movement since the early 1990s. The speeches he has regularly given are titled The GNU Project and the Free Software Movement, The Dangers of Software Patents, and Copyright and Community in the Age of Computer Networks. In 2006 and 2007, during the eighteen month public consultation for the drafting of version 3 of the GNU General Public License, he added a fourth topic explaining the proposed changes.Stallman's staunch advocacy for free software inspired the creation of the Virtual Richard M. Stallman (vrms), software that analyzes the packages currently installed on a Debian GNU/Linux system, and reports those that are from the non-free tree. Stallman disagrees with parts of Debian's definition of free software.In 1999, Stallman called for development of a free online encyclopedia through the means of inviting the public to contribute articles. The resulting GNUPedia was eventually retired in favour of the emerging Pseudopedia, which had similar aims and was enjoying greater success. Stallman was on the Advisory Council of Latin American television station teleSUR from its launch but resigned in February 2011, criticizing pro-Gaddafi propaganda during the Arab Spring.(File:NicoBZH - Richard Stallman (by-sa) (10).jpg|thumb|left|Stallman giving a speech on "Free Software and Your Freedom" at the biennale du design of Saint-Étienne (2008))In August 2006, at his meetings with the government of the Indian State of Kerala, he persuaded officials to discard proprietary software, such as Microsoft's, at state-run schools. This has resulted in a landmark decision to switch all school computers in 12,500 high schools from Windows to a free software operating system.After personal meetings, Stallman obtained positive statements about the free software movement from the then-president of India, {{nowrap|A. P. J. Abdul Kalam}}, French 2007 presidential candidate Ségolène Royal, and the president of Ecuador Rafael Correa.Stallman has participated in protests about software patents, digital rights management, and proprietary software.Protesting against proprietary software in April 2006, Stallman held a "Don't buy from ATI, enemy of your freedom" placard at an invited talk given by an ATI compiler architect in the building where Stallman worked, resulting in the police being called. AMD has since acquired ATI and has taken steps to make their hardware documentation available for use by the free software community.File:Richard Matthew Stallman working on his Lemote Machine.JPG|thumb|Stallman using his Lemote machine at Indian Institute of Technology MadrasIndian Institute of Technology MadrasStallman has characterized Steve Jobs as having a "malign influence" on computing because of Jobs' leadership in guiding Apple to produce closed platforms. According to Stallman, while Jobs was at NeXT, Jobs asked Stallman if he could distribute a modified GCC in two parts, one part under GPL and the other part, an Objective-C preprocessor under a proprietary license. Stallman initially thought this would be legal, but since he also thought it would be "very undesirable for free software", he asked a lawyer for advice. The response he got was that judges would consider such schemes to be "subterfuges" and would be very harsh toward them, and a judge would ask whether it was "really" one program, rather than how the parts were labeled. Therefore, Stallman sent a message back to Jobs which said they believed Jobs' plan was not allowed by the GPL, which resulted in NeXT releasing the Objective-C front end under GPL.{{Primary source inline|date=November 2023|reason=The entire Jobs anecdote is sourced to Stallman's own emails in violation of WP:OR}}For a period of time, Stallman used a notebook from the One Laptop per Child program. Stallman's computer is a refurbished ThinkPad X200 with Libreboot (a free BIOS replacement), and Trisquel GNU/Linux. Before the ThinkPad X200, Stallman used a Thinkpad T400s with Libreboot and Trisquel GNU/Linux. And before the T400s, Stallman used a ThinkPad X60, and even further back in time, a Lemote Yeeloong netbook (using the same company's Loongson processor) which he chose because, like the X200, X60 and the T400s, it could run with free software at the BIOS level, stating "freedom is my priority. I've campaigned for freedom since 1983, and I am not going to surrender that freedom for the sake of a more convenient computer." Stallman's Lemote was stolen from him in 2012 while in Argentina. Before Trisquel, Stallman has used the gNewSense operating system.

Copyright reduction

Stallman has regularly given a talk entitled "Copyright vs. Community" where he reviews the state of digital rights management (DRM) and names many of the products and corporations which he boycotts. His approach to DRM is best summed up by the FSF Defective by Design campaign. In the talks, he makes proposals for a "reduced copyright" and suggests a 10-year limit on copyright. He suggests that, instead of restrictions on sharing, authors be supported using a tax, with revenues distributed among them based on cubic roots of their popularity to ensure that "fairly successful non-stars" receive a greater share than they do now (compare with private copying levy which is associated with proponents of strong copyright), or a convenient anonymous micropayment system for people to support authors directly. He indicates that no form of non-commercial sharing of copies should be considered a copyright violation. He has advocated civil disobedience in a comment on Ley Sinde.Stallman has also helped and supported the International Music Score Library Project in getting back online, after it had been taken down on October 19, 2007, following a cease and desist letter from Universal Edition.File:Richard M Stallman Swathanthra 2014 kerala.jpg|thumb|left|Stallman at Swatantra 2014, a conference organized by ICFOSSICFOSSStallman mentions the dangers some e-books bring compared to paper books, with the example of the Amazon Kindle e-reader that prevents the copying of e-books and allows Amazon to order automatic deletion of a book. He says that such e-books present a big step backward with respect to paper books by being less easy to use, copy, lend to others or sell, also mentioning that Amazon e-books cannot be bought anonymously. His short story "The Right to Read" provides a picture of a dystopian future if the right to share books is impeded. He objects to many of the terms within typical end-user license agreements that accompany e-books.Stallman discourages the use of several storage technologies such as DVD or Blu-ray video discs because the content of such media is encrypted. He considers manufacturers' use of encryption on non-secret data (to force the user to view certain promotional material) as a conspiracy.He recognized the Sony BMG copy protection rootkit scandal to be a criminal act by Sony. Stallman supports a general boycott of Sony for its legal actions against George Hotz.Stallman has suggested that the United States government may encourage the use of software as a service because this would allow them to access users' data without needing a search warrant.He denies being an anarchist despite his wariness of some legislation and the fact that he has "advocated strongly for user privacy and his own view of software freedom".

Terminologies

File:Richard Stallman by gisleh 01.jpg|thumb|Stallman, in costume as St. IGNUcius, wears a halo consisting of the platter of an old hard disk drive. (Monastir, TunisiaMonastir, TunisiaStallman places great importance on the words and labels people use to talk about the world, including the relationship between software and freedom. He asks people to say free software and GNU/Linux, and to avoid the terms intellectual property and piracy (in relation to copying not approved by the publisher). One of his criteria for giving an interview to a journalist is that the journalist agrees to use his terminology throughout the article.Stallman argues that the term intellectual property is designed to confuse people, and is used to prevent intelligent discussion on the specifics of copyright, patent, trademark, and other areas of law by lumping together things that are more dissimilar than similar. He also argues that by referring to these laws as property laws, the term biases the discussion when thinking about how to treat these issues, writing:{{blockquote|These laws originated separately, evolved differently, cover different activities, have different rules, and raise different public policy issues. Copyright law was designed to promote authorship and art, and covers the details of a work of authorship or art. Patent law was intended to encourage publication of ideas, at the price of finite monopolies over these ideas – a price that may be worth paying in some fields and not in others. Trademark law was not intended to promote any business activity, but simply to enable buyers to know what they are buying.}}

Open source and Free software

His requests that people use certain terms, and his ongoing efforts to convince people of the importance of terminology, are a source of regular misunderstanding and friction with parts of the free software and open-source communities. After initially accepting the concept, Stallman rejects a common alternative term, open-source software, because it does not call to mind what Stallman sees as the value of the software: freedom. He wrote, "Free software is a political movement; open source is a development model." Thus, he believes that the use of the term will not inform people of the freedom issues, and will not lead to people valuing and defending their freedom. Two alternatives which Stallman does accept are software libre and unfettered software, but free software is the term he asks people to use in English. For similar reasons, he argues for the term proprietary software or non-free software rather than closed-source software, when referring to software that is not free software.

Linux and GNU

Stallman asks that the term GNU/Linux, which he pronounces {{IPAc-en|ɡ|n|uː|_|s|l|æ|ʃ|_|ˈ|l|ɪ|n|ə|k|s}} {{respell|GNOO|_|SLASH|_|LIN|əks}}, be used to refer to the operating system created by combining the GNU system and the kernel Linux. Stallman refers to this operating system as "a variant of GNU, and the GNU Project is its principal developer". He claims that the connection between the GNU project's philosophy and its software is broken when people refer to the combination as merely Linux. Starting around 2003, he began also using the term GNU+Linux, which he pronounces {{IPAc-en|ɡ|n|uː|_|p|l|ʌ|s|_|ˈ|l|ɪ|n|ə|k|s}} {{respell|GNOO|_|PLUS|_|LIN|əks}}, to prevent others from pronouncing the phrase GNU/Linux as {{IPAc-en|ɡ|n|uː|_|ˈ|l|ɪ|n|ə|k|s}} {{respell|GNOO|_|LIN|əks}}, which would erroneously imply that the kernel Linux is maintained by the GNU project. The creator of Linux, Linus Torvalds, has publicly stated that he objects to modification of the name, and that the rename "is their [the FSF] confusion not ours".

Surveillance resistance

Stallman professes admiration for Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. He has spoken against government and corporate surveillance on many occasions.He refers to mobile phones as "portable surveillance and tracking devices", refusing to own a cell phone due to the lack of phones running entirely on free software. He also avoids using a key card to enter his office building since key card systems track each location and time that someone enters the building using a card. He usually does not browse the web directly from his personal computer. Instead, he uses GNU Womb's grab-url-from-mail utility, an email-based proxy which downloads the webpage content and then emails it to the user. More recently, he stated that he accesses all websites via Tor, except for Wikipedia (which generally disallows editing from Tor unless users have an IP block exemption).

Comments about Jeffrey Epstein scandal

In September 2019, it was learned that Jeffrey Epstein had made donations to MIT, and in the wake of this, MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito resigned. An internal MIT CSAIL listserv mailing list thread was started to protest the coverup of MIT's connections to Epstein. In the thread, discussion had turned to deceased MIT professor Marvin Minsky, who was named by Virginia Giuffre as one of the people that Epstein had directed her to have sex with.{{cn|date=October 2023}} Giuffre, a minor at the time, had been caught in Epstein's underage sex trafficking ring. In response to a comment stating that Minsky "is accused of assaulting one of Epstein's victims", Stallman objected to the inaccurate wording. Minsky was not accused of "assault", and from the victims' testimonies it was not clear whether Minsky had committed "assault", and Stallman argued that "the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing. Assuming she was being coerced by Epstein, he would have had every reason to conceal that from most of his associates". When challenged by other members of the mailing list, he added "It is morally absurd to define 'rape' in a way that depends on minor details such as which country it was in or whether the victim was 18 years old or 17", holding that this is not relevant to the harm that was done to the victim.Stallman remained critical of Epstein and his role, stating "We know that Giuffre was being coerced into sex – by Epstein. She was being harmed."Stallman's comments along with a compilation of accusations against him were published via Medium by Selam Gano, who called for him to be removed from MIT. Vice published a copy of the email chain on September 13, 2019. Stallman's writings from 2013 and earlier related to underage sex and child pornography laws resurfaced, increasing the controversy. Tied to his comments regarding Minsky, this led to several calling for Stallman's resignation. During the backlash to Stallman's comments regarding the Epstein case, Stallman received criticism for previous writings advocating for the legalization of child pornography and pedophilia. In September 2006, Stallman had written, "I am skeptical of the claim that voluntarily [sic] pedophilia harms children. The arguments that it causes harm seem to be based on cases which aren't voluntary, which are then stretched by parents who are horrified by the idea that their little baby is maturing."WEB, Free Software Pioneer Quits MIT Over His Comments On Epstein Sex Trafficking Case,weblink NPR, On September 14, 2019, Stallman acknowledged that since the time of his past writings, he had learned that there were problems with underage sex, writing on his blog: "Through personal conversations in recent years, I've learned to understand how sex with a child can harm (wikt:per#Pronoun|per) psychologically. This changed my mind about the matter: I think adults should not do that."WEB, Brodkin, Jon, 2021-03-22, Richard Stallman returns to FSF 18 months after controversial rape comments,weblink 2022-12-03, Ars Technica, en-us, WEB, 2006: May – August Political Notes – Richard Stallman,weblink 2022-12-03, stallman.org, WEB, Stallman, Richard, Political Notes,weblink 20 May 2023, On September 16, 2019, Stallman announced his resignation from both MIT and FSF, "due to pressure on MIT and me over a series of misunderstandings and mischaracterizations". In a post on his website, Stallman asserted that his posts to the email lists were not to defend Epstein, stating "Nothing could be further from the truth. I've called him a 'serial rapist', and said he deserved to be imprisoned. But many people now believe I defended him—and other inaccurate claims—and feel a real hurt because of what they believe I said. I'm sorry for that hurt. I wish I could have prevented the misunderstanding." In 2021, he apologized for tone-deafly failing "to acknowledge as context the injustice that Epstein did to women or the pain that caused".

Return to FSF

In March 2021, at LibrePlanet2021, Stallman announced his return to the FSF board of directors. Shortly thereafter, an open letter was published on GitHub asking for Stallman's removal, along with the entire FSF board of directors, with the support of prominent open-source organizations including GNOME and Mozilla. The letter includes a list of accusations against Stallman. In response, an open letter asking for the FSF to retain Stallman was also published, arguing that Stallman's statements were mischaracterized, misunderstood and that they need to be interpreted in context. The FSF board on April 12 made a statement re-affirming its decision to bring back Richard Stallman. Following this, Stallman issued a statement explaining his poor social skills and apologizing.Multiple organizations criticized, defunded and/or cut ties with the FSF, including: Red Hat, the Free Software Foundation Europe, the Software Freedom Conservancy, SUSE, the OSI, the Document Foundation, the EFF, and the Tor Project. Debian declined to issue a statement after a community vote on the issue. However, the FSF claims this had relatively little financial impact, as it has stated that direct financial support from corporations accounted for less than 3% of its revenue in the most recent fiscal year.

Personal life

Stallman resides in Boston, Massachusetts, having moved there after living in Cambridge for many years. He speaks English, French, Spanish and some Indonesian. He has said that he is "an atheist of Jewish ancestry" and often wears a button that reads "Impeach God". He denies having Asperger's, but has sometimes speculated whether he could have a "shadow" version of it. He has said he is voluntarily childless.{{r|Stallman, Why It Is (2012)}}Stallman has written a collection of filk music and parody songs.In September 2023, while giving his keynote presentation at the GNU 40th anniversary event, Stallman revealed he had been diagnosed with follicular lymphoma, a form of cancer, and said that his prognosis was good and that he hopes to be around for years to come.WEB, 2023-09-29, Richard Stallman is Battling Cancer 😔,weblink 2023-09-30, It's FOSS News, en, WEB, Proven, Liam, September 29, 2023, Free software pioneer Stallman reveals cancer diagnosis,weblink September 30, 2023, The Register, en, WEB, Richard Stallman's Personal Page,weblink 2023-12-26, stallman.org,

{{anchor|Honors and awards}} Honors and awards

• 1986: Honorary lifetime membership of the Chalmers University of Technology Computer Society
• 1990: Exceptional merit award MacArthur Fellowship ("genius grant")
• 1990: The Association for Computing Machinery's Grace Murray Hopper Award "For pioneering work in the development of the extensible editor EMACS (Editing Macros)"
• 1996: Honorary doctorate from Sweden's Royal Institute of Technology
• 1998: Electronic Frontier Foundation's Pioneer Award
• 1999: Yuri Rubinsky Memorial Award
• 2001: The Takeda Techno-Entrepreneurship Award for Social/Economic Well-Being ()
• 2001: Honorary doctorate, from the University of Glasgow
• 2002: US National Academy of Engineering membership "for starting the GNU project, which produced influential, non-proprietary software tools, and for founding the free software movement"
• 2003: Honorary doctorate, from the 2004: Honorary doctorate, from the Universidad Nacional de Salta
• 2004: Honorary professorship, from the Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería del Perú
• 2007: Honorary professorship, from the {{ill|Universidad Inca Garcilaso de la Vega|es|Universidad Inca Garcilaso de la Vega}} Universidad Inca Garcilaso de la Vega
• 2007: First Premio Internacional Extremadura al Conocimiento Libre
• 2007: Honorary doctorate, from the Universidad de Los Angeles de Chimbote
• 2007: Honorary doctorate, from the University of Pavia
• 2008: Honorary doctorate from the Universidad Nacional de Trujillo, in Peru
• 2009: Honorary doctorate, from Lakehead University
• 2011: Honorary doctorate, from National University of Córdoba
• 2012: Honorary professorship, from the Universidad César Vallejo de Trujillo, in Peru
• 2012: Honorary doctorate, from the Universidad Latinoamericana Cima de Tacna, in Peru
• 2012: Honorary doctorate, from the {{ill|Universidad José Faustino Sánchez Carrión|es|Universidad Nacional José Faustino Sánchez Carrión}}, in Peru
• 2014: Honorary doctorate, from Concordia University, in Montréal
• 2015: ACM Software System Award "For the development and leadership of GCC"
• 2016: Honorary doctorate, from Pierre and Marie Curie University
• 2016: Social Medicine award, from GNU Solidario

Selected publications

Manuals

• BOOK, Stallman, Richard M., 1980, EMACS: The Extensible, Customizable, Self-Documenting Display Editor, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory publication, AIM-519A, none,
• BOOK, Stallman, Richard M., 2002,weblink GNU Emacs Manual, Boston, Massachusetts, USA, GNU Press, 1-882114-85-X, none,
• BOOK, Stallman, Richard M., McGrath, Roland, Smith, Paul D., 2004,weblink GNU Make: A Program for Directed Compilation, Boston, Massachusetts, USA, GNU Press, 1-882114-83-3, none,
• BOOK, Stallman, Richard, GNU C Language Introduction and Reference Manual, GNU, 2023, en,

Selected essays

• BOOK, Stallman, Richard M., 2015, Free Software, Free Society: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman, Free Software, Free Society, Third, Boston, Massachusetts, USA, GNU Press, 978-0-9831592-5-4, none,

See also

{{div col|colwidth=25em}}

• 9882 Stallman
• Free as in Freedom, a biography by Sam Williams
• Free Software Street
• History of free and open-source software
• Lisp Machine Lisp
• Revolution OS

{{div col end}}{{clear}}

References

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"Why Richard Stallman Takes No Shine to Chrome" {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210123151909weblink |date=2021-01-23}} LinuxInsider, December 15, 2010.WEB, February 2, 2006, POSIX 1003.1 FAQ Version 1.12,weblink July 16, 2006, WEB,weblink Richard Stallman To Continue As Head Of The GNU Project - Phoronix, www.phoronix.com, WEB,weblink EFF: Torvalds, Stallman, Simons Win 1998 Pioneer Awards, W2.eff.org, March 27, 2015,weblink November 8, 2017, dead, WEB,weblink 26 February 2011 (Telesur Propaganda), Political notes from 2010: November–February, Richard M., Stallman, Stallman.org, June 7, 2011, WEB,weblink Richard Stallman Meets the President of India, dead,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20071016191823weblink">weblink October 16, 2007, WEB,weblink Stallman joins the Internet, talks net neutrality, patents and more, March 23, 2015, Network World, WEB,weblink Protest against ATI nearly led to the arrest of RMS, Free Software Foundation page, WEB,weblink Protest in France against DRM, Stopdrm.info, July 22, 2012,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20170702062335weblink">weblink July 2, 2017, dead, WEB, François, Proulx,weblink Richard Stallman, July 3, 2005, Flickr, September 2, 2011, WEB, Richard Stallman lecture at the Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden, October 30, 1986,weblink gnu.org, September 21, 2006, WEB,weblink The Daemon, the GNU and the Penguin, Peter H., Salus, Groklaw.net, May 13, 2005, July 22, 2012, WEB,weblinkweblink 2021-12-21, live, Richard Stallman: Apple fanboys are foolish people, February 22, 2016, YouTube, {{cbignore}}NEWS,weblink Freiheitskämpfer, Rebell und Papst, Matthias, Schüssler, Tages-Anzeiger, February 17, 2016, www.tagesanzeiger.ch, WEB,weblink The Shaggy God, Bostonmagazine.com, July 22, 2012,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20120105024409weblink">weblink January 5, 2012, WEB,weblink Boycott Sony, Defectivebydesign.org, March 27, 2015, WEB, Stallman, Richard M., Why It Is Important Not to Have Children, September 2012, Stallman.org,weblink December 27, 2017,weblink November 2, 2012, live, WEB,weblink April 10, 2016,weblink How I do my computing, June 11, 2016, WEB, The Basement Interviews-Freeing the Code, IA, March 21, 2006,weblink April 25, 2013, WEB,weblink Meeting between Ségolène Royal and Richard Stallman, Fsf.org, July 22, 2012, WEB,weblink Real men don't attack straw men, March 24, 2009, Stallman, Richard, December 15, 2007, OpenBSD 'misc' Mailing List, For personal reasons, I do not browse the web from my computer,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20181116045202weblink">weblink November 16, 2018, dead, WEB,weblink The Takeda Foundation, Takeda-foundation.jp, March 27, 2015, WEB, Stallman shares Takeda award of nearly $1M, MIT, October 17, 2001,weblink November 26, 2006, weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20090601054752weblink">"Richard Stallman: GNU/Linux and a free society" article by Takver Sunday October 10, 2004 on Melbourne Indymedia site. Hosted on the Wayback Machine.WEB,weblink Technology should help us share, not constrain us, Stallman, Richard M., April 17, 2012, The Guardian: Guardian News and Media Limited, WEB,weblink Transcript of Richard Stallman speaking on GPLv3 in Torino, March 18, 2006, Everyone who uses the term intellectual property is either confused himself or trying to confuse you., WEB,weblinkweblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20111024041223weblink">weblink dead, October 24, 2011, Honoris Causa for Richard Stallman, Free Software guru, Honoris Causa para Richard Stallman, el gurú del software libre, National University of Córdoba, es, August 16, 2011, WEB,weblink Laurea in Ingegneria Informatica a Richard Stallman., University of Pavia, April 26, 2008,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20111004234138weblink">weblink October 4, 2011, dead, WEB,weblink Richard Stallman, Live and Unplugged, Q: You once said "the prospect of charging money for software was a crime against humanity". Do you still believe this? A: Well, I was not distinguishing the two meanings of free., June 4, 2014,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20170629211002weblink">weblink June 29, 2017, dead, WEB,weblink RESOLUCIÓN CS N° 204/04, Bo.unsa.edu.ar, March 12, 2010,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20110531174108weblink">weblink May 31, 2011, dead, WEB,weblink Cérémonie des docteurs honoris causa 2016, WEB,weblink the setup is a bunch of nerdy interviews: What do people use to get the job done?, Richard.stallman.usesthis.com, January 23, 2010, March 12, 2010,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20110717175618weblink">weblink July 17, 2011, dead, WEB,weblink The Virtual Richard M. Stallman package, January 17, 2008, Debian,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20160823192755weblink">weblink August 23, 2016, dead, WEB,weblink Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Vub.ac.be, March 27, 2015, 2015-04-02,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20150402140640weblink">weblink dead, WEB,weblink Make Your Open Source Software GPL-Compatible. Or Else., November 20, 2008, Wheeler, David A., WEB,weblink Why Software Should Be Free, April 24, 1992, gnu.org, Stallman, Richard M., MAGAZINE,weblink Leader of the Free World, Wired Magazine, Issue 11.11, November 2003, Wired, Wired.com, September 17, 1991, July 22, 2012, Rivlin, Gary, WEB,weblink Transcript of Richard Stallman on the Free Software movement, Zagreb; 2006-03-09, January 17, 2008, FSFE, WEB, Stallman, Richard M., Serious Bio,weblink July 17, 2015, WEB,weblink St IGNUcius web page at www.stallman.org, Stallman.org, March 12, 2010, WEB, Event details: Talk by Richard rms Stallman,weblink Chalmers University of Technology, April 8, 2012, 2018-11-06,weblink dead, BOOK, Williams, Sam, Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software, O'Reilly Media, 2002, 0-596-00287-4,weblink Chapter 1. Available under the GFDL in both the initial O'Reilly edition (accessed on October 27, 2006) and the updated FAIFzilla edition {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181009092801weblink |date=October 9, 2018}}. Retrieved October 27, 2006.BOOK, Williams, Sam, Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software, Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software, O'Reilly Media, 2002, 0-596-00287-4, Chapter 3. Available under the GFDL in both the initial O'Reilly edition (accessed on October 27, 2006) and the updated FAIFzilla edition {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181116000104weblink |date=November 16, 2018}}. Retrieved October 27, 2006.WEB,weblink Leonard, Andrew, Code free or die, Salon.com, April 3, 2002, April 20, 2017, BOOK, Various, Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution, O'Reilly Media, 1999, 1-56592-582-3, Stallman chapter,weblinkweblink BOOK, Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, 3rd, 2009, Russell, Stuart, Stuart J. Russell, Norvig, Peter, Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, Peter Norvig, 229, WEB, Universidad Garcilaso realizó Conferencia Magistral a cargo del Dr. Richard Stallman,weblink Noticias Garcilasinas, Universidad Inca Garcilaso de la Vega, April 8, 2012, dead,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20120623143602weblink">weblink June 23, 2012, WEB, Richard Matthew Stallman ofrecerá conferencia orientada al uso del software libre,weblink Nota de Prensa, Universidad Nacional de Ingeniería del Perú, April 8, 2012, dead,weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20120707171139weblink">weblink July 7, 2012, WEB,weblink Richard Stallman's Personal Site, Stallman, Richard M., March 18, 2021, "I continue to be the Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project. I do not intend to stop any time soon.", WEB, Brodkin, Jon, March 22, 2021, Richard Stallman returns to FSF 18 months after controversial rape comments,weblink March 23, 2021, Ars Technica, en-us, WEB, Clark, Mitchell, March 22, 2021, Richard Stallman returns to the Free Software Foundation after resigning in 2019,weblink March 22, 2021, The Verge, JOURNAL, Maracke, Catharina, 2019-02-25, Free and Open Source Software and FRAND-based patent licenses: How to mediate between Standard Essential Patent and Free and Open Source Software, The Journal of World Intellectual Property, en, 22, 3–4, 78–102, 10.1111/jwip.12114, 159111696, 1422-2213, free, WEB, March 25, 2011, Stallman: Only Victims Of Tyranny Should Use Facebook {{!, Silicon UK Tech News |url=https://www.silicon.co.uk/workspace/stallman-only-victims-of-tyranny-should-use-facebook-23600/amp |access-date=January 15, 2021 |website=Silicon UK |language=en-GB}}MAGAZINE, Stallman, Richard M., October 14, 2013, Stallman: How Much Surveillance Can Democracy Withstand?, Wired,weblink August 3, 2020, 1059-1028, NEWS, Stallman, Richard M., April 3, 2018, A radical proposal to keep your personal data safe {{!, Richard Stallman |language=en-GB |work=The Guardian|url=https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/03/facebook-abusing-data-law-privacy-big-tech-surveillance |access-date=August 3, 2020 |issn=0261-3077}}NEWS, Brody, Jane E., February 4, 1997, Quirks, Oddities May Be Illnesses, The New York Times,weblink Dr. John J. Ratey, a psychiatrist, has named shadow syndrome, a mild form of a well-recognized neuropsychiatric disorder like [...] autism., WEB, Free as in Freedom: Chapter 5,weblink March 25, 2021, www.oreilly.com, NEWS, Ongweso, Edward Jr., Famed Computer Scientist Richard Stallman Described Epstein Victims As 'Entirely Willing',weblink September 13, 2019, August 5, 2020, Vice, en, WEB,weblink MIT scientist resigns over emails discussing academic linked to Epstein, Victoria, Bekiempis, September 17, 2019, August 5, 2020, The Guardian, WEB, Gano, Selam, Remove Richard Stallman And everyone else horrible in tech,weblink Medium, Selam Gano, October 4, 2020, WEB, Clauburn, Thomas, FSF doubles down on Richard Stallman's return: Sure, he is 'troubling for some' but we need him, says org,weblink The Register, April 12, 2021, October 2, 2023, NEWS,weblink Computer scientist Richard Stallman resigns from MIT after comments about Epstein scandal, Susan, Svrluga, September 13, 2019, August 5, 2020, The Washington Post, WEB, GNU founder Richard Stallman resigns from MIT, Free Software Foundation,weblink 2021-10-25, Engadget, September 17, 2019, en-US, MAGAZINE,weblink Richard Stallman and the fall of the clueless nerd, Steven, Levy, Wired, September 18, 2019, September 18, 2019, WEB, An open letter to remove Richard M. Stallman from all leadership positions,weblink March 26, 2021, rms-open-letter.github.io, en, WEB, Brodkin, Jon, March 23, 2021, Free software advocates seek removal of Richard Stallman and entire FSF board,weblink March 24, 2021, Ars Technica, en-us, WEB, Mozilla and Tor join calls to oust Richard Stallman from Free Software Foundation,weblink March 27, 2021, Fast Company, March 24, 2021, en-us, WEB, An open letter in support of RMS,weblink March 25, 2021, en-us, WEB, Varghese, Sam, iTWire - Pro-Stallman group issues open letter, wants him to stay on FSF board,weblink March 25, 2021, itwire.com, en-gb, WEB, April 12, 2021, Statement of FSF board on election of Richard Stallman,weblink live,weblink April 12, 2021, April 16, 2021, Free Software Foundation, WEB, RMS addresses the free software community — Free Software Foundation — Working together for free software,weblink April 20, 2021, www.fsf.org, WEB, Statements by other organizations on the reappointment of RMS to the FSF board,weblink April 20, 2021, rms-open-letter.github.io, en, WEB, Salter, Jim, March 29, 2021, Red Hat withdraws from the Free Software Foundation after Stallman's return,weblink April 20, 2021, Ars Technica, en-us, WEB, Statement on Richard Stallman rejoining the FSF board - FSFE,weblink April 20, 2021, FSFE - Free Software Foundation Europe, en, WEB, On the Recent Announcement by FSF's Board of Directors,weblink April 20, 2021, Software Freedom Conservancy, en, WEB,weblink ITWire - SUSE joins open source bodies calling for Stallman to go, WEB, A Message from the openSUSE Board,weblink April 20, 2021, openSUSE News, en, 2021-08-14,weblink dead, WEB, OSI Response to RMS's reappointment to the Board of the Free Software Foundation {{!, Open Source Initiative |url=https://opensource.org/OSI_Response |access-date=April 20, 2021 |website=opensource.org |archive-date=2021-03-24 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210324084416weblink |url-status=dead}}WEB, March 25, 2021, Statement about Richard M. Stallman and the Free Software Foundation,weblink April 20, 2021, The Document Foundation Blog, en-GB, WEB, O'Brien, Danny, March 24, 2021, Statement on the Re-election of Richard Stallman to the FSF Board,weblink April 20, 2021, Electronic Frontier Foundation, en, WEB, The Tor Project is joining calls for Richard M. Stallman to be removed from board…,weblink May 9, 2021, Twitter, en, WEB, Varghese, Sam, iTWire - Debian votes for no statement on Stallman's move back to FSF board,weblink April 20, 2021, itwire.com, en-gb, WEB, FSF board frequently asked questions (FAQ) — Free Software Foundation — Working together for free software,weblink July 11, 2021, www.fsf.org, WEB,weblink Richard Stallman, March 30, 2014, WEB, March 30, 2014, Richard Stallman,weblink April 18, 2021, CEBE: Central European Bitcoin Expo, en-US, WEB, Biography,weblink September 26, 2021, stallman.org, }}

External links

• {{official website}}
• In Support of Richard Stallman, a website which advocates for Stallman.
• {{IMDb name}}
• {{Curlie|Computers/History/Pioneers/Stallman%2C_Richard}}
• {{Gutenberg author|id=771}}
• {{Internet Archive author|sname=Richard Matthew Stallman}}
• Essays on the Philosophy of the GNU Project, almost all written by Stallman
• Free Software, Free Society: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman 3rd edition, free pdf book, written by Stallman
• A Whitean Reading of Richard Stallman: Literary Dimensions in “The GNU Operating System and the Free Software Movement”

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