Richard Stallman
Founder of the free software movement and the GNU Project.
Most quoted
"Calling it 'intellectual property' is a propaganda term designed to confuse people into thinking that the various different laws that restrict what you can do with information are all one thing, and that they all have the same moral basis."
— from Various speeches
"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."
— from The GNU Project
"My work on free software is motivated by an idealistic goal: spreading freedom and cooperation. I want to encourage free software to spread, replacing proprietary software that forbids cooperation, and thus make our society better."
— from Essays
All quotes by Richard Stallman (373)
The term 'cloud computing' is a marketing term for 'someone else's computer.'
The free software movement is about ethics, not just technology.
If you don't control your software, your software controls you.
The only way to have true innovation is to have free software.
Proprietary software is a form of digital feudalism.
The term 'intellectual property' is a misnomer.
I consider that my life is for the cause of freedom. I am not going to let anything distract me from that.
The most important freedom is the freedom to change your mind.
Freedom is not merely the right to do what you want, it is the right to do what you ought.
The purpose of life is to be free.
To be free is to have control over your own life.
The greatest danger to freedom is not tyranny, but apathy.
We should not be slaves to technology; we should be its masters.
The only way to have true knowledge is to be able to share it freely.
The value of a program is not in its price, but in its freedom.
Our freedom depends on our ability to cooperate.
The future of humanity depends on free software.
Knowledge should be free, like air and water.
The essence of freedom is the ability to choose.
We must fight for our freedom, even if it means sacrificing convenience.
Contemporaries of Richard Stallman
Other Computer Sciences born within 50 years of Richard Stallman (1953).