Richard Stallman — "Using proprietary software is like living under a dictatorship."
Using proprietary software is like living under a dictatorship.
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More from Richard Stallman
"I don't use a credit card. I don't want to be tracked."
"We must never surrender our freedom."
"The point is with a proprietary program, when the users don't have the source code, we can never tell. So you must consider every proprietary program as potential malware."
"I don't believe in intellectual property. I believe in copyright and patent, but not 'intellectual property'."
"If you want to be free, you have to fight for it."
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'.