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@ -17,13 +17,13 @@ The great doctor Richard Matthew Stallman (RMS, also [GNU](gnu.md)/Stallman, chi
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 [Project Gutenberg](https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5768). You should read this!
Richard Stallman is also famous for having foreseen and foretold virtually all the atrocities that [corporations](corporation.md) would do with computer technology, such as all the spying through cell phones, trade of personal data and abusing secrecy and "[intellectual ownership](intellectual_property.md)" of source code for bullying others, though to be honest it doesn't take a genius to foresee that [corporations](corporation.md) 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.
Richard Stallman is also famous for having foreseen and foretold virtually all the atrocities that [corporations](corporation.md) would do with computer technology, such as all the cell phone surveillance, business with personal data and abuse of secrecy and "[intellectual ownership](intellectual_property.md)" of source code for bullying others, though to be honest it doesn't take a genius to [foresee](future.md) that [corporations](corporation.md) will want to rape people as much as possible, it is frankly more surprising he was one of very few who did so. 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, which was thankfully noticed and resulted in a consolidation of his notoriety as a techno prophet. We should be all grateful.
It seems that **Stallman had at least one girlfriend**; in the 1999 book called *Open Sources* he says that he originally wanted to name the [HURD](hurd.md) kernel Alix after a [girl](woman.md) that was at the time his "sweetheart". On his website he further wrote about a girl named Melynda he met in 1995, however noting their love was only platonic.
[tl;dr](tldr.md): At 27 as an employee at [MIT](mit.md) [AI](ai.md) labs Stallman had a bad experience when trying to fix a Xerox printer who's [proprietary](proprietary.md) 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](fight_culture.md)" 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 [GNU](gnu.md) project on the [Usenet](usenet.md) -- this was a project to create a completely [free as in freedom](free_software.md) [operating system](os.md), an alternative to the proprietary [Unix](unix.md) 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 [Free Software Foundation](fsf.md). GNU and FSF popularized and standardized the term [free (as in freedom) software](free_software.md), [copyleft](copyleft.md) and free licensing, mainly with the [GPL](gpl.md) license. In the 90s GNU adopted the [Linux](linux.md) operating system kernel and released a complete version of the GNU operating system -- these are nowadays known mostly as "Linux" [distros](distro.md). As a head of FSF and GNU Stallman more or less stopped [programming](programming.md) 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.
[tl;dr](tldr.md): At 27 as an employee at [MIT](mit.md) [AI](ai.md) labs Stallman had a bad experience when trying to fix a Xerox printer who's [proprietary](proprietary.md) 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](fight_culture.md)" 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 [GNU](gnu.md) project on the [Usenet](usenet.md) -- this was a project to create a completely [free as in freedom](free_software.md) [operating system](os.md), an alternative to the proprietary [Unix](unix.md) 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 [Free Software Foundation](fsf.md). GNU and FSF popularized and standardized the term [free (as in freedom) software](free_software.md), [copyleft](copyleft.md) and free licensing, mainly with the [GPL](gpl.md) license. In the [90s](90s.md) GNU adopted the [Linux](linux.md) operating system kernel and released a complete version of the GNU operating system -- these are nowadays known mostly as "Linux" [distros](distro.md). As a head of FSF and GNU Stallman more or less stopped [programming](programming.md) 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 [software](software.md) Stallman has for his whole life strongly and tirelessly promoted free software and [copyleft](copyleft.md) and has himself only used free software; he has always practiced what he preached and led the best example of how to live without [proprietary](proprietary.md) 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 [Plato](plato.md) or [Socrates](socrates.md) (who followed his own principles so much that he voluntarily died for them).
Regarding [software](software.md) Stallman has for his entire life vehemently and tirelessly promoted free software and [copyleft](copyleft.md) and has himself only used free software; he has always practiced his preaching and led the best example of how to live a life without [proprietary](proprietary.md) software. This in itself is a huge merit and something rare to witness, regardless of whether he ever slipped (which we aren't aware of) or to what degree we agree with all he ever said; his moral strength and integrity is really what makes him special among basically all the other giants of recent decades, 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 [Plato](plato.md) or [Socrates](socrates.md) (who followed his own principles so much that he voluntarily died for them).
[Fun](fun.md) fact: there is a [package](package.md) called *[vrms](vrms.md)*, for virtual RMS, that checks whether you have any non-free packages installed. Ironically it seems to not even tolerate non-free documentation under [GFDL](gfdl.md) with invariant sections, which is very correct but probably not something Stallman himself would do since GFDL is basically his own invention :)
@ -31,7 +31,7 @@ This said, we naturally also have to state we don't nearly agree with all he say
He is a weird guy, looks a bit like PS1 Hagrid, and has been recorded on video eating dirt from his feet before giving a lecture besides others -- another time he was even recorded raging on stage after being stressed out but that's actually odd -- he practically always keeps a calm, monotone, very rational speech (much different from any politician or revolutionary). In the book *Free as in Freedom* he admits he might be slightly [autistic](autism.md). Nevertheless he's extremely smart, has magna [cum](cum.md) laude degree in [physics](physics.md) from Harvard, 10+ honorary doctorates, fluently speaks English, Spanish, 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). He is really good at public speaking, and that despite the mentioned calmness of his speech -- here possibly his inner autism shines because he just speaks in very simple but cold rational and logical ways that everyone from an expert to a complete layman understands, he rarely stops to say something like "ummm... wait", he's just letting out carefully crafted sentences as if you were reading them from a book, showing ways from facts to logical conclusions without cheap rhetoric tricks like wild gesticulation, rising voice or using buzzwords and strong terms. His interviews are however often awkward for the same reasons: it's usually the interviewer asking a question and then waiting 15 minutes for Stallman to print out the whole answer without giving a chance to be interrupted.
Stallman has a [beautifully](beauty.md) [minimalist](minimalism.md) 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).
Worthy of note if also Stallman's [beautifully](beauty.md) [minimalist](minimalism.md) 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 [capitalism](capitalism.md) though he probably isn't a hardcore anticapitalist (he's an [American](usa.md) after all). [Wikidata](wikidate.md) states he's a proponent of [alter-globalization](alter_globalization.md) (not completely against globalization in certain areas but not supporting the current form of it).