Disclaimer: This is an unofficial portrait of Richard Stallman (although with his authorization), made by Mehdi , for the purpose of creating a network of people who share Richard's views on Free Software.
Please send friend requests only if you share his values, want to use Free Software and to promote its philosophy .
The official website of Richard Stallman is http://www.stallman.org/ .
The Wikipedia biography of Richard Stallman
The Uncyclopedia biography of Richard Stallman
Richard Matthew Stallman, often called RMS, is the founder of the GNU Project (1984), which was dedicated to the creation of a 100% free (as in freedom, not as in "gratis") software operating system .
This notion of "free as in freedom" software relates to four kinds of freedoms:
- The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
- The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition to this.
- The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbour (freedom 2).
- The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition to this.
These user's freedoms are promoted by the Free Software Foundation (1985), which is also the primary sponsor for the GNU Project.
In 1990, all the parts of the free software operating system were ready, except one: the kernel, which is the core of the operating system.
At that point, in 1991, a Finnish computer science student called Linus Torvalds, had just finished the development of a kernel he called "Linux", using GNU tools, and made it free software.
The combination of both the GNU operating system (minus the kernel) and the Linux kernel gave birth to the flagship of the Free Software movement: the GNU/Linux operating system .
One of the other achievements of RMS is the General Public License (the GPL), which helped the development of Free Software projects in a legal frame-work.
Here are some examples of projects using and relying on free software:
- the Wikipedia.org free encyclopedia runs on free software ( MediaWiki ), and uses a license derived from the General Public License for its published material,
- the popular search engine Google runs on a computer cluster running GNU/Linux: each time you send a request to Google it is a free software that answers back to you,
- the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) Project has chosen to install free and open source software on its laptops,
- many mobile phones and other electronic devices use operating systems derived from GNU/Linux .
By now RMS is travelling the world, promoting and defending the values of peoples' freedom (not only in software use and development), sharing/generosity and ethics.
The main current campaigns of the Free Software Foundation:
There is no significant change without activism, and no efficient activism without some basic resources, so help the FSF defend your freedom!
You can become a member of the FSF (by paying only a few $ monthly!) , or simply make a donation of whatever amount you like.
