Introduction -


Richard Mathew Stallman, referred to in the hacker community as “rms” was born 16 Of March, 1953 to Daniel Stallman and Alice Lippmann in New York City. Richard Stallman’s contributions to computer science are the renowned “GNU Operating System” used by the well-known kernel “Linux” or as referred to by Stallman himself “GNU + Linux” and his passionate pursuit for free software with the founding of the Free Software Movement which he is currently the president of and his creation of the first EMACS.


He first started into computers while in high school at the IBM New York Scientific Centre., writing a numerical analysis program for part of his summer and then writing a text editor in APL, starting him on his course to pursue programming although he was an assistant at a biology lab he was adept at and planning to, pursue maths and physics till finally opting to drop his pursuit of a physics doctorate in favour of his passion for programming.


In 1971 Stallman was a programmer at the MIT AI Lab, an AI lab staff system hacker, he was also a frequent and active member of the hacking community on campus, and as his job description he had to improve the MIT Operating System ITS (Incompatible Time-Sharing System). At the time the term free software was simply not used as there was no such term during the era where source code would be freely and simply given to those who asked for it.

“Read it, change it, cannibalize it”.

Discussion –


Richard Stallman’s contribution to computer science, communications and the internet chiefly came in the form of the GNU Project and the Free Software Foundation.


“I could have made money this way, and perhaps amused myself writing code. But I knew that at the end of my career, I would look back on years of building walls to divide people, and feel I had spent my life making the world a worse place.”(4)

- Richard Stallman on why he decided against writing proprietary software, in essence his reason for starting the GNU Project and Free Software Foundation.


In 1984 he began work on the GNU Project his goal was to make a free fully-functioning operating system, like UNIX but fundamentally not UNIX. Stallman had planned on incorporating other free software in the GNU system for example the TeX as the primary text formatter and the X window system.(1) This was planned to save years of development time, however due to many design changes and software limitations Stallman essentially had to build the entire GNU system from scratch.

Developing the GNU C compiler, the GNU EMACS text editor, the GNU symbolic debugger and the GNU Make build automator(2) among various other aspects of the GNU system. The GNU was later used by Finnish student Linus Torvalds who used the GNU development tools to manufacture the Linux kernel.(3) As it was made using the GNU’s development tools, the GNU’s existing programs were ported easily ported thus spawning a fully-functioning operating system, which most of the user-community refer to simply as Linux. This however has caused quite a bit of controversy with Stallman as he argues that not including the GNU in the name detracts from the value of the project and demeans the value of the free software movement.(3)

It was 1985 when Richard Stallman first founded the Free Software Foundation, a tax-exempt charity which he is the non-salaried president of.(2) The FSF promotes the production of free software while it does itself produce software and maintain the GNU Project keeping it up to date with patches and new programs. Also it promotes the release of free software under the GNU GPL. The majority of GNU software has been released under the GNU General Public License as well as the majority of free software the foundation releases. This method which Stallman uses is called copyleft.(1)


“You know, if you were *really* going to starve, you'd be justified in writing proprietary software.”(5)

- Richard Stallman commenting on the ethical justification of writing proprietary software.


Copyleft provides all the released software copyright protection but rather than restrict distribution and copying, it’s protected. Under copyleft everyone has the ability to copy, modify and distribute modified version of the software gratis or for a fee, while stopping people adding restrictions of their own and limiting the release and distribution of the software.(1) This in turn protects the software and changes made to the software, promoting the constant production of new “free” software and and the maintaining of already available software.


Conclusion –


Richard Stallman’s contributions have had a lasting effect in computer science with the GNU Project and his creation of the first EMACS both of which continues to this day to progress and evolve and in essence affecting communications and the internet with the spawning of the Free Software Foundation and the GNU GPL, which promotes the release of free software and protects it’s freedoms, stopping it from being absorbed into proprietary software.

“Fighting patents one by one will never eliminate the danger of software patents; any more than swatting mosquitoes will eliminate malaria.”(6) – Richard Stallman

Richard Stallman continues to be a keen activist for the freedom of software, fighting against software patents and proprietary software. He is also an outspoken political activist.

Bibliography

  1. www.gnu.org/gnu/thegnuproject.html Retrieved: 10/10/2011


  1. www.livinginternet.com/i/ia_hackers_stallman.htm Retrieved: 12/10/2011


  1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman Retrieved: 10/10/2011


  1. www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/r/richard_stallman.html Retrieved: 14/10/2011


  1. www.gnu.org/events/rms-nyu-2001-transcript.txt Retrieved: 14/10/2011


  1. http:en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman Retrieved: 14/10/2011


Keith Wall