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Stallman, Richard M., 1953-We have 1 book for this author.
Richard Matthew Stallman (born March 16, 1953), often abbreviated rms (lower case),[1] is a software freedom activist, hacker,[2] and software developer. In September 1983, he launched the GNU Project[3] to create a free Unix-like operating system, and has been the project's lead architect and organizer. With the launch of the GNU Project he started the free software movement, and in October 1985 set up the Free Software Foundation. He co-founded the League for Programming Freedom. Stallman pioneered the concept of copyleft and is the main author of several copyleft licenses including the GNU General Public License, the most widely used free software license.[4] Since the mid-1990s, Stallman has spent most of his time advocating for free software, as well as campaigning against both software patents and what he sees as excessive extension of copyright laws. Stallman has also developed a number of pieces of widely used software, including the original Emacs, the GNU Compiler Collection, and the GNU Debugger. Early yearsStallman was born in 1953 in New York City, New York. Hired by the IBM New York Scientific Center, Stallman spent the summer after his high-school graduation writing his first program, a preprocessor for the PL/I programming language on the IBM 360. During this time, Stallman was also a volunteer Laboratory Assistant in the biology department at Rockefeller University. Although he was already moving toward a career in mathematics or physics, his teaching professor at Rockefeller thought he would have a future as a biologist.[5] In June 1971, as a first year student at Harvard University, Stallman became a programmer at the AI Laboratory of MIT. There he became a regular in the hacker community, where he was usually known by his initials, "RMS" (which was the name of his computer accounts). In the first edition of the Hacker's Dictionary, he wrote, "'Richard Stallman' is just my mundane name; you can call me 'rms'."[6] Stallman graduated from Harvard magna cum laude earning a BA in Physics in 1974. He then enrolled at MIT as a graduate student, but abandoned his pursuit of graduate degrees while remaining a programmer at the MIT AI Laboratory. In 1977, Stallman published an AI truth maintenance system called dependency-directed backtracking. The paper[7] was co-authored by Gerald Jay Sussman.[8] As a hacker in MIT's AI laboratory, Stallman worked on software projects like TECO, Emacs, and the Lisp Machine Operating System. He would become an ardent critic of restricted computer access in the lab. 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 (to demonstrate that they were not increasing security, but only hindering free access to each other's software and discouraging sharing it), with a suggestion to change it to the empty string instead, to restore this free access. Around 20% of the users followed his advice. Although Stallman boasted of the success of his campaign for many years afterward,[9] passwords ultimately prevailed. MIT's hacker culture declinesIn the late 1970s and 1980s, the hacker culture that Stallman thrived in 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 can be regarded as a consequence triggered by the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, as stated by Stallman's MIT fellow Brewster Kahle.[10] When Brian Reid in 1979 placed "time bombs" in Scribe to restrict unlicensed access to the software, Stallman proclaimed that "the prospect of charging money for software was a crime against humanity."[11] In 1980, Stallman and some other hackers at the AI Lab were not given the software's source code for the Xerox 9700 laser printer (code-named Dover), the industry's first. Stallman had modified the software on an older 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 when a printer was jammed. Not being able to add this feature to the Dover printer was a major inconvenience, as the printer was on a different floor from most of the users. This one experience convinced Stallman of the ethical need to require free software. At that time, it became clear that he wanted people to discard proprietary software.[12] In 1980, 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, they 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 forced Greenblatt to also resign by citing MIT policies. While both companies delivered proprietary software, Stallman believed that LMI, unlike Symbolics, had tried to avoid hurting the lab. For two years, from 1982 to the end of 1983, Stallman singlehandedly duplicated the efforts of the Symbolics programmers, in order to prevent them from gaining a monopoly on the lab's computers.[13] However, he was the last of his generation of hackers at the lab. He rejected a future where he would have to sign non-disclosure agreements not to share source code or technical information with other software developers and perform other actions he considered betrayals of his principles. He chose instead to share his work with others in what he regarded as a classical spirit of collaboration. While Stallman did not participate in the 1960s era counterculture, he was inspired by its rejection of the pursuit of wealth as the primary goal of living. Stallman argues that software users should have the freedom to "share with their neighbor" and to be able to study and make changes to the software that they use. He has repeatedly said that attempts by proprietary software vendors to prohibit these acts are "antisocial" and "unethical".[14] The phrase "software wants to be free" is often incorrectly attributed to him, and Stallman argues that this is a misstatement of his philosophy.[15] He argues that freedom is vital for the sake of users and society as a moral value, and not merely for pragmatic reasons — pragmatic for example: because it may lead to improved software. In January 1984, Stallman quit his job at MIT to work full-time on the GNU project, which he had announced in September 1983. He did not complete a Ph.D. but has been awarded six honorary degrees (see list below). GNU projectStallman announced the plan for the GNU operating system in September 1983 on several ARPAnet mailing lists and USENET.[16] In 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 non-profit corporation called the Free Software Foundation (FSF) to employ free software programmers and provide a legal infrastructure for the free software movement. Stallman is the unsalaried president of the FSF, which is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded in Massachusetts. In 1985, Stallman invented and 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, compiler, debugger, and a build automator. The notable exception was a kernel. In 1990, members of the GNU project began a kernel called GNU Hurd, which has yet to achieve the maturity level required for widespread usage. By producing software tools needed to write software, and publishing a generalized license (the GPL) that could be applied to any software project, Stallman helped make it easier for others to write free software independent of the GNU project. In 1991, Linus Torvalds, a Finnish student, used such tools to produce the Linux kernel. This could be combined with the GNU system to make a complete operating system. Most people use the name Linux to refer not only to the kernel, but to the combination of the Linux kernel itself plus the GNU system, which Stallman claims unfairly disparages the value of the GNU project, as discussed below. Stallman's influences on hacker culture include the name POSIX[17] and the Emacs editor. On UNIX systems, GNU Emacs's popularity rivaled that of another editor vi, spawning an editor war. Stallman's humorous take on this was to jokingly canonize himself as "St. Ignucius" / "St. IGNUcius" of the Church of Emacs[18][19] and acknowledge that "vi vi vi is the editor of the beast." A number of developers view Stallman as being difficult to work with from a political, interpersonal, or technical standpoint. Around 1992, developers at Lucid Inc. doing their own work on Emacs clashed with Stallman and ultimately forked the software, into what later became XEmacs. An email archive published by Jamie Zawinski documents their criticisms and Stallman's response.[20] Ulrich Drepper, whom Stallman had appointed to work on GNU libc for the GNU Project, published complaints against Stallman in the release notes for glibc 2.2.4[21], where he accuses Stallman of attempting a "hostile takeover" of the project, referring to him as a "control freak and raging maniac." Eric S. Raymond, who sometimes speaks for parts of the open source movement, has written many pieces laying out that movement's disagreement with Stallman and the free software movement, often in terms sharply critical of Stallman.[22] Activism
 Stallman has written many essays on software freedom and since the early 1990s has been an outspoken political campaigner for the free software movement. The speeches he has regularly given are titled "The GNU project and the Free Software movement"[23], "The Dangers of Software Patents"[24], and "Copyright and Community in the age of computer networks".[25] In 2006, during the year-long public consultation for the drafting of version 3 of the GNU General Public License, he added a fourth topic explaining the proposed changes.[26] Stallman's staunch advocacy for free software inspired "Virtual Richard M. Stallman" (vrms), software that analyzes the packages currently installed on a Debian GNU/Linux system, and report those that are from the non-free tree.[27] Stallman would disagree with parts of Debian's definition of free software.[28] In 1999, Stallman called for development of a free on-line encyclopedia through the means of inviting the public to contribute articles. See GNUPedia.[29] In Venezuela, Stallman has delivered public speeches and promoted the adoption of free software in the state's oil company (PDVSA), in municipal government, and in the nation's military. Although generally supportive of Hugo Chávez, Stallman has criticised some policies on television broadcasting, free speech rights, and privacy in meetings with Chávez and in public speeches in Venezuela.[30][31] Stallman is on the Advisory Council of teleSUR, a Latin American television station.[32] 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.[33] He visited Madras Institute of Technology, Chennai twice (2001 and 2003). He gave speech on FSF. He visited VIT University campus in February 2005 where he advocated the use of Free Software in Indian universities. After personal meetings, Stallman has obtained positive statements about the free software movement from the President of India, Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam[34], French 2007 presidential candidate Ségolène Royal[35], and the president of Ecuador Rafael Correa.[36] TerminologyStallman places great importance on the words and labels people use to talk about the world, including the relationship between software and freedom. He untiringly asks people to say "free software", "GNU/Linux", and to avoid the term "intellectual property". His requests that people use certain terms, and his ongoing efforts to convince people of the importance of terminology, are a source of regular mis-understanding and friction with parts of the free and open source software community. One of his criteria for giving an interview to a journalist is that the journalist agree to use his terminology throughout their article.[37] Sometimes he has even required journalists to read parts of the GNU philosophy before an interview, for "efficiency's sake".[38] He has been known to turn down speaking requests over some terminology issues.[39] 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.[40] Thus it will not inform people of the freedom issues, and will not lead to people valuing and defending their freedom.[41] Two alternatives which Stallman does accept are "libre software" and "unfettered software", however, "free software" is the term he asks people to use in English. For similar reasons, he argues for the term "proprietary software" rather than "closed source software", when referring to software that is not free software. Stallman repeatedly asks that the term "GNU/Linux", which he pronounces "GNU Slash Linux", be used to refer to the operating system created by combining the GNU system and the Linux kernel. Stallman refers to this operating system as "a variant of GNU, and the GNU Project is its principal developer."[42] 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."[43] Starting around 2003, he began also using the term "GNU+Linux", which he pronounces "GNU plus Linux". 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, and trademark laws, respectively, by lumping together areas of law 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.
An example of cautioning others to avoid other terminology while also offering suggestions for possible alternatives, is this sentence of an email by Stallman to a public mailing list:
In an essay, "Words to avoid" posted on the GNU Web site, he suggests the following:
Personal lifeBy all accounts, including his own,[47] Stallman has devoted the bulk of his life’s energies to political and software activism. Professing to care little for material wealth, he explains that he has “always lived cheaply… like a student, basically. And I like that, because it means that money is not telling me what to do.”[48] For many years, Stallman maintained no permanent residence outside his office at MIT’s CSAIL Lab,[49] describing himself as a “squatter” on campus.[50]He recommends not owning a mobile phone, for privacy reasons [51] as they track users and report users' movements to the phone company.[52] [53] His “research affiliate” position at MIT is unpaid.[54] When asked about his influences, he has replied that he admires Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi, Ralph Nader, and Dennis Kucinich. He has also commented: “I admire Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, even though I criticize some of the things that they did.”[55] Stallman was born to Jewish[56] parents Alice Lippman and Daniel Stallman. In a footnote to an article he wrote in 1999, he says “As an atheist, I don't follow any religious leaders, but I sometimes find I admire something one of them has said.” [57] Stallman is a Green Party supporter [58]. Stallman’s personal website includes a personal ad where he describes himself as a “reputedly intelligent” atheist.[47] He has had “sweethearts” before, according to interviews, but stated in March 2006 that he was not then in a relationship.[59] As a young adult, Stallman counted folk dance among his passions,[60] and though he had to give it up in 1975 due to knee injury,[61] he was able to resume around 1979. In 1998 a foot injury forced him to abandon folk dancing permanently, but he still performs small dance steps as a matter of spontaneous habit.[62] He enjoys a wide range of musical styles from Conlon Nancarrow to folk;[63][64] he plays the recorder.[65] The Free Software Song, alternative words for the Bulgarian folk dance Sadi Moma, has attracted praise from his admirers and derision from some detractors.[66] More recently he wrote a take-off on the Cuban folk song Guantanamera, about a prisoner in the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, and recorded it in Cuba with Cuban musicians.[67] Stallman is a fan of science fiction, including works by the author Greg Egan. He occasionally goes to science fiction conventions[68] and wrote the Free Software Song while awaiting his turn to sing at a convention. He has written two science fiction stories, notably The Right to Read and Jinnetic Engineering. A native English speaker, Stallman is also sufficiently fluent in French and Spanish to deliver his two hour speeches in those languages, and claims a “somewhat flawed” command of Indonesian.[69] Stallman chooses not to celebrate Christmas, instead celebrating on December 25 a holiday of his own invention, "Grav-mass." The name and date are references to Isaac Newton, whose birthday falls on that day. [70] RecognitionStallman has received the following recognition for his work:
Publications
See also
External links
SpeechesStallman has four topics that he has spoken on often:
References
This biographical information was gathered from the Richard_M_Stallman page, courtesy of the Wikipedia project. BooksThe Right to Read |
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