Richard Matthew Stallman

Introduction

Richard Stallman (born march 16, 1953) is a pioneer of freeware, often shortened to rms is a software software freedom activist and computer programmer from America. Rms is the creator of the GNU project, a project that aims to create a free Unix-like operating system. As well as the GNU project, Rms also launched the free software movement, which aims to make all software free. Richard Stallman also pioneered the concept of copy left. Richard is also the main author of several copy left licences, including the GNU general public licence.

Discussion

Stallman’s parents were Daniel Stallman and Alice Lippmann. He was born in 1953. He first encountered computers in high school in an IBM New York Scientific Centre. He had a summer job writing a numerical analysis program in FORTRAN. His task only took him a couple of weeks and he spent the rest of the summer writing a text editor in APL. Stallman spent the summer after he graduated from high school writing a preposer for the PL/I programming language on the IBM system/360. At this time, Stallman was also volunteering as a lab assistant in the biology department at Rockefeller University.

Rockefeller University thought he would have a future as a biologist. In his first year at Harvard, Stallman was known for his good math skills. In 1971, Stallman was a programmer at the MIT AI (artificial intelligence) lab and became a known member of the hacker community, where he was known as rms. He wrote in the hackers dictionary’s first edition that “Richard Stallman” was just a mundane name; you can call me rms. Stallman gave up on his doctorate in favour of programing. As a hacker Stallman worked on projects like TECO, EMACS, and the LISP machine operating system. He became an ardent critic of restricted computer access in the lab.

In the late 70s and early 80s, companies stopped distributing source code in an effort to stop software being used on their competitors’ computers and to limit copying and redistributing. This kind of software had existed before and it was known that it would become the norm. The change in legal characteristics of software can be seen because of the U.S. copyright act of 1976 as said by Stallman’s MIT fellow Brewster Kahle. When Brian Reid placed “time bombs” in Scribe to restrict unlicensed access Stallman said it was a crime against humanity. In later years, he proclaimed that it was blocking a user’s freedom, not charging for software that was a crime against humanity.

Stallman argues that users should have the ability to share and be able to study and make changes to software that they use. He believes that attempts by software vendors to stop this are wrong and antisocial. The phrase “software wants to be free” is often incorrectly attributed to him.

In 1985, Stallman published the GNU manifesto. This outlined his reasons for creating a free operating system. This OS would be called GNU, and would be fully compatible with UNIX. The name UNIX is a recurring anocrym for GNU’s not UNIX. After this the project developed into the Free Software Foundation with Stallman as its unpaid president, its goals were to employ free software programmers and create a legal structure for the FSF.

Stallman is the creator of copy left, a legal term for the protection of a user’s right to modify and distribute freeware. Stallman was responsible for contributing many tools to the GNU system, including a text editor (EMACS), a compiler (GCC), a debugger (gbd) and a build automator (gmake). The only thing missing was a kernel, work on this component began in 1990 and it was called GN hurd, which had yet to become ready for widespread use.

More recently, due to the death of Steve Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) Richard stall man wrote the following on his blog:

“Steve Jobs, the pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed to sever fools from their freedom, has died.

As Chicago Mayor Harold Washington said of the corrupt former Mayor Daley, "I'm not glad he's dead, but I'm glad he's gone." Nobody deserves to have to die -- not Jobs, not Mgr. Bill, not even people guilty of bigger evils than theirs. However, we all deserve the end of Jobs' malign influence on people's computing.

Unfortunately, that influence continues despite his absence. We can only hope his successors, as they attempt to carry on his legacy, will be less effective”.

As it can be seen from the above extract, both Jobs and Stallman were at opposing views on software and computing. While not saying that he was glad jobs passed away, Stallman expressed that he was glad that his influence was gone from the world of computing and that his successors would never achieve the same success in stopping freedom of computers and their users

Conclusion

Stallman’s influence on the world of computing can still be seen today as he is still very much active and working as leader of the FSF. As well as working as part of the FSF Stallman is also still working to complete the GNU project in order to make more free software and source codes available to the general public. Stallman’s ideals are sound and logical and should he get what he wants and source code is distributed freely again then I think that the manufacturers, companies and the regular users of software will benefit greatly. Whether Stallman will continue to have a big influence on computing remains to be seen.

References

http://oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/

Stallman.org

http://ia600201.us.archive.org/13/items/The_Basement_Interviews/Richard_Stallman_Interview.pdf

http://fsfe.org/projects/gplv3/#transcripts

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman