Richard Stallman — "If the users don't control the program, the program controls the users."
If the users don't control the program, the program controls the users.
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More from Richard Stallman
"To punish people for possessing some sort of published work — whether 'child pornography' or 'terrorist information' or anything else — is simply wrong. And it regularly hurts the innocent."
"The internet is a tool for corporate control."
"We must resist the temptation of convenience at the cost of freedom."
"The proper term is 'GNU/Linux', not 'Linux'."
"I'm not a programmer. I'm a software liberationist."
About Richard Stallman (born 1953)
American programmer who founded the Free Software Foundation and the GNU Project, whose copyleft GPL licensing made the modern Linux ecosystem possible. Closely associated with Linus Torvalds (Linux kernel creator who builds on GNU userland) and Eric S. Raymond (open-source advocate (The Cathedral and the Bazaar)). For an intellectual contrast, see Bill Gates, Microsoft co-founder — Gates's 1976 Open Letter to Hobbyists arguing for software-as-property is the foundational document Stallman's GPL was specifically written to refute — the two opposing answers to 'who owns the code'.