Richard Stallman — "Proprietary software is a form of digital enslavement."
Proprietary software is a form of digital enslavement.
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More from Richard Stallman
"Once GNU is written, everyone will be able to obtain good system software free, just like air."
"Giving the Linus Torvalds Award to the Free Software Foundation is a bit like giving the Han Solo Award to the Rebel Alliance."
"I decided not to have children. (...) Not having children is an important contribution to humanity. My decision probably reduced the 2050 population by 5 to 10 people."
"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 m…"
"The proprietary software industry wants to turn you into a docile consumer."
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'.