Richard Stallman — "Proprietary software is a tool of oppression."
Proprietary software is a tool of oppression.
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More from Richard Stallman
"Proprietary software is a social problem, not just a technical one."
"I exercise my authority over glibc very rarely – and when I have done so, I have talked with the official maintainers. So rarely that some of you thought that you are entirely autonomous. But that is …"
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"Copyleft is a legal tool to ensure that every user of a program has freedom."
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'.