Richard Stallman

   { RMS is a legend and overall a great human, but let's be reminded we
   shouldn't be creating any [1]heroes or celebrities. ~drummyfish }

   The great doctor Richard Matthew Stallman (RMS, also [2]GNU/Stallman and
   saint IGNUcius, born 1953 in New York) is one of the biggest figures in
   software [3]history, inventor of [4]free (as in freedom) software, its
   lifelong advocate, founder of the [5]GNU project, [6]Free Software
   Foundation, a great [7]hacker and the author of a famous text editor
   [8]Emacs besides others. He is a non-religious [9]Jew and an [10]atheist
   (though he is the highest saint of [11]Church Of Emacs), a man who firmly
   stands behind his beliefs, who always acts in conformance with them and
   who's been advocating for [12]ethics and user freedom in the computing
   world. He has also been called the king of software [13]cloning, for he
   started the wave of making free, ethical clones of [14]proprietary
   programs. Stallman doesn't wear a [15]suit, he never shaves and doesn't
   use a cellphone, he talks even if what he says is unpopular -- if he
   didn't make history, these things alone would make him one of the most
   based men of our time. However, on a completely serious note, let's not
   make gods out of people -- Richard Stallman also does some very retarded
   things, for example he plays along with the [16]fight culture and started
   conforming to the [17]SJW newspeak, thumbs down on that.

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   [18]ASCII art of Richard Stallman

   Stallman's life along with free software's history is documented by a
   free-licensed book named Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman's Crusade
   for Free Software on which he collaborated. You can get it gratis e.g. at
   [19]Project Gutenberg. You should read this!

   Richard Stallman is also famous for having foreseen and foretold virtually
   all the atrocities that [20]corporations would do with computer
   technology, such as all the spying through cell phones, trade of personal
   data and abusing secrecy and "[21]intellectual ownership" of source code
   for bullying others, though to be honest it doesn't take a genius to
   foresee that corporations will want to rape people as much as possible,
   it's more of a surprise he was one of very few who did. The important
   thing is he acted immediately he spotted this -- though corporations
   indeed did go on to rape people anyway, Richard Stallman made some very
   important steps early on to make the impact much less catastrophic
   nowadays. We should be all grateful.

   [22]tl;dr: At 27 as an employee at [23]MIT [24]AI labs Stallman had a bad
   experience when trying to fix a Xerox printer who's [25]proprietary
   software source code was made inaccessible; he also started spotting the
   betrayal of hacker principles by others who decided to write proprietary
   software -- he realized proprietary software was inherently wrong as it
   prevented studying, improvement and sharing of software and enable abuse
   of users. From 1982 he was involved in a "fight" against the Symbolics
   company that pushed aggressive proprietary software; he was rewriting
   their software from scratch to allow Lisp Machine users more freedom --
   here he proved his superior programming skills as he was keeping up with
   the whole team of Symbolics programmers. By 1983 his frustration reached
   its peak and he announced his [26]GNU project on the [27]Usenet -- this
   was a project to create a completely [28]free as in freedom [29]operating
   system, an alternative to the proprietary [30]Unix system that would offer
   its users freedom to use, study, modify and share the whole software, in
   the hacker spirit. He followed by publishing a manifesto and establishing
   the [31]Free Software Foundation. GNU and FSF popularized and standardized
   the term [32]free (as in freedom) software, [33]copyleft and free
   licensing, mainly with the [34]GPL license. In the 90s GNU adopted the
   [35]Linux operating system kernel and released a complete version of the
   GNU operating system -- these are nowadays known mostly as "Linux"
   [36]distros. As a head of FSF and GNU Stallman more or less stopped
   programming and started traveling around the world to give talks about
   free software and has earned his status of one of the most important
   people in software history.

   Regarding [37]software Stallman has for his whole life strongly and
   tirelessly promoted free software and [38]copyleft and has himself only
   used free software; he has always practiced what he preached and led the
   best example of how to live without [39]proprietary software. This in
   itself is extremely amazing and rare, regardless of whether he ever
   slipped (which we aren't aware of) or to what degree we agree with his
   ideas; his moral strength and integrity is really what makes him special
   among basically all other great people of recent centuries, it's really as
   if he comes from a different time when people TRULY internally believed
   something so much they would die for it, that they wouldn't sell even a
   small part of that belief for any kind of personal benefit; this is
   something that really puts him alongside the greatest philosophers such as
   [40]Plato or [41]Socrates (who followed his own principles so much that he
   voluntarily died for them).

   Fun fact: there is a [42]package called [43]vrms, for virtual RMS, that
   checks whether you have any non-free packages installed. Ironically it
   seems to not even tolerate non-free documentation under [44]GFDL with
   invariant sections, which is very correct but probably not something
   Stallman himself would do since GFDL is basically his own invention :)

   This said, we naturally also have to state we don't nearly agree with all
   he says. For example he isn't too concerned about [45]bloat (judging by
   the GNU software and his own creation, [46]Emacs) and he also doesn't care
   that much about [47]free culture (some of his written works prohibit
   modification, see [48]GFDL's "invariant seciotns", and his GNU project
   allows proprietary non-functional data as long as they are not
   "software"). Sadly he has also shown signs of being a [49]type A fail
   personality by writing about some kind of [50]newspeak "gender neutral
   language" and by seeming to be caught in a [51]fight culture. On his
   website he also has an [52]American flag and claims to be a patriot, i.e.
   leaning to nationalism and therefore [53]fascism. Nevertheless he
   definitely can't be accused of populism or hypocrisy as he basically tells
   what he considers to be the truth no matter what, and he is very
   consistent in this. Some of his unpopular opinions (mostly those opposing
   [54]pedophile witch hunt, with which we DO agree) brought him a lot of
   trouble and an endless wrath of [55]SJWs. For this he was [56]cancelled
   and in 2019 was forced to resigned from the position of president of the
   FSF but continues to support it.

   He is a weird guy, having been recorded on video eating dirt from his feet
   before giving a lecture. In the book Free as in Freedom he admits he might
   be slightly [57]autistic. Nevertheless he's pretty smart, has magna
   [58]cum laude degree in [59]physics from Harvard, 10+ honorary doctorates,
   fluently speaks English, Spanish and French and a little bit of Indonesian
   and has many times proven his superior programming skills (even though he
   later stopped programming to fully work on promoting the FSF).

   Stallman has a beautifully [60]minimalist website at
   http://www.stallman.org where he actively comments on current news and
   issues. He also made the famous free software song (well, only the lyrics,
   the melody is taken from a Bulgarian folk song Sadi Moma) -- he often
   performs it in public himself (he is pretty good at keeping the weird
   rhythm of the song while at the same time also singing, that's
   impressive).

   Stallman has been critical of [61]capitalism though he probably isn't a
   hardcore anticapitalist (he's an [62]American after all). [63]Wikidata
   states he's a proponent of [64]alter-globalization (not completely against
   globalization in certain areas but not supporting the current form of it).

   In the book Free As In Freedom it is also mentioned that Stallman had
   aversion to passwords and secrecy in general -- at MIT he used the
   username RMS with the same password so that other people could easily log
   in through his account and access [65]ARPANET (the predecessor of
   [66]Internet). Indeed, we applaud this, the "[67]security" hysteria is
   killing the computing world.

   As [68]anarchists we of course despise the idea of worshiping people,
   creating [69]heroes and cults of personalities, but the enormous
   [70]historical significance of Stallman has to be stressed as a plain and
   simple fact and though we may disagree with some of his methods and even
   opinions, it's as clear as it can be that he acted [71]selflessly, in
   favor of all people -- something that can be said about very few, if
   anyone at all. Most other old time hackers, such as [72]Eric S. Ramyond
   and [73]Rob Pike immediately abandoned all ideals of ethics and jumped the
   capitalist train with the first sight of money, Stallman stayed opposed to
   it, and for this he has our uttermost respect. Even though in our days his
   name is overshadowed in the mainstream by rich businessman and creators of
   commercially successful technology and even though we ourselves disagree
   with Stallman on some points, in the future [74]history may well see
   Stallman as perhaps the greatest man of the software era, and rightfully
   so. Stallman isn't a mere creator of a commercially successful software
   product or a successful politician, he is an extremely morally strong
   philosopher, a great example to others, a prophet, someone who sees the
   truth and shows it to people -- he brilliantly foresaw the course of
   history and quickly defined ethics needed for the new era of mass
   available programmable computers at the right time, before the hammer hit.
   And not only that, he also basically alone established this ethics as a
   standard IN SPITE of all the world's [75]corporations [76]fighting back,
   in a field that back then was relatively obscure, unpopular in mainstream
   and hence not much supported by any mass media. He is also extremely
   unique in not pursuing self interest, in TRULY living his own philosophy,
   dedicating his whole life to his cause and refusing to give in even
   partially. All of this is at much higher level than simply becoming
   successful and famous within the contemporary capitalist system, his life
   effort is pure, true and timeless, unlike things achieved by pieces of
   shit such as [77]Steve Jobs.

See Also

     * [78]Jesus
     * [79]Einstein
     * [80]vrms
     * [81]people

Links:
1. hero_culture.md
2. gnu.md
3. history.md
4. free_software.md
5. gnu.md
6. fsf.md
7. hacking.md
8. emacs.md
9. jew.md
10. atheism.md
11. church_of_emacs.md
12. ethics.md
13. clone.md
14. proprietary.md
15. suit.md
16. fight_culture.md
17. sjw.md
18. ascii_art.md
19. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5768
20. corporation.md
21. intellectual_property.md
22. tldr.md
23. mit.md
24. ai.md
25. proprietary.md
26. gnu.md
27. usenet.md
28. free_software.md
29. os.md
30. unix.md
31. fsf.md
32. free_software.md
33. copyleft.md
34. gpl.md
35. linux.md
36. distro.md
37. software.md
38. copyleft.md
39. proprietary.md
40. plato.md
41. socrates.md
42. package.md
43. vrms.md
44. gfdl.md
45. bloat.md
46. emacs.md
47. free_culture.md
48. gfdl.md
49. fail_ab.md
50. newspeak.md
51. fight_culture.md
52. usa.md
53. fascism.md
54. pedophilia.md
55. sjw.md
56. cancel_culture.md
57. autism.md
58. cum.md
59. physics.md
60. minimalism.md
61. capitalism.md
62. usa.md
63. wikidate.md
64. alter_globalization.md
65. arpanet.md
66. internet.md
67. security.md
68. anarchism.md
69. hero_culture.md
70. history.md
71. selflessness.md
72. esr.md
73. rob_pike.md
74. history.md
75. corporation.md
76. fight_culture.md
77. steve_jobs.md
78. jesus.md
79. einstein.md
80. vrms.md
81. people.md