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)
I don't really distinguish between practical and ethical. I think that doing the right thing is the most practical thing.
You deserve to be able to cooperate openly and freely with other people who use software.
The problem is not that the developers are paid. The problem is the restrictions placed on the users.
To treat your neighbors as your enemy is not a good way to live.
I consider that the golden rule requires that if I like a program I must share it with other people who like it.
Control over the use of one's ideas really constitutes control over other people's lives; and it is usually used to make their lives more difficult.
The only thing worse than a computer you can't trust is a computer that trusts you.
People sometimes ask me if it is a sin in the Church of Emacs to use vi. Using a free version of vi is not a sin; it is a penance.
Emacs is written in Lisp, which is the only computer language that is beautiful.
I do not use Facebook, because its business model is based on surveillance and manipulation.
The war on sharing is a war against human rights.
If you want freedom, you have to be ready to defend it.
The idea of patents is to encourage invention by giving a temporary monopoly on an idea. But in software, patents do not encourage invention; they obstruct it.
I'm not completely happy with the term 'open source' because it doesn't stress freedom.
The goal of the free software movement is to liberate everyone in cyberspace.
I've never owned a portable phone. I don't want a tracking device in my pocket.
A program is free software if the program's users have the four essential freedoms...
Freedom 0: The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose.
Freedom 1: The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish.
Freedom 2: The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor.
Contemporaries of Richard Stallman
Other Computer Sciences born within 50 years of Richard Stallman (1953).