Richard Stallman — "Using proprietary software is like letting someone put chains on you."
Using proprietary software is like letting someone put chains on you.
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More from Richard Stallman
"It's stupidity. It's worse than stupidity: it's a marketing hype campaign. … Somebody is saying this is inevitable – and whenever you hear somebody saying that, it's very likely to be a set of busines…"
"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. So happy hacking."
"The internet is a surveillance machine if you don't use free software."
"People said I should accept the world. Bullshit! I don't accept the world."
"How does a Chinese chef cook a noisy animal? In a jabberwok."
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'.