Extract from "The Hacker's Dictionary":
My hobbies include affection, international folk dance, flying, cooking, physics, recorder, puns, science fiction fandom, and programming; I magically get paid for doing the last one.
This was in 1983, when RMS was still working at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab, before he created the GNU Project. Since then, not only has RMS dropped his position at MIT to dedicate his life to promoting and defending Free Software, but he is not getting paid for anything anymore!
Music
Listen to the Free Software song here, and its alternate versions including a heavy-metal one!
RMS says, quote, "I like Javanese and Balinese gamelan music, Indian classical music (preferably Carnatic), Japanese folk dance music (minyo), Japanese court music (gagaku), Vietnamese and Thai and Burmese traditional music, Georgian and Armenian folk music, Balkan and Turkish folk dance music, Latvian folk music, La Musgaña (Castillan folk music), Breton folk dance music, and some Andean folk dance music. I also sometimes like western classical music, though less than I did 30 years ago.
I liked American popular music until 1962. Since then, if music is popular in the West, chances are I won't like it; but there are occasional exceptions -- particularly, I noted several in the early 80s. I also often like parodies, such as Wierd Al's, and Bitchney Spears' 'Make my boobies one more size'."
Movies
Quoting from RMS: "The Hollywood movie companies are the enemies of our freedom, and I do not want to give them my money. So I recommend a near boycott of
Hollywood: never pay to see a movie unless you have specific reason to believe it is good.
In principle, this is not the same as a complete boycott of Hollywood.
In practice, it comes to almost the same thing ;-).
And never buy an encrypted DVD unless you have a copy of DeCSS to play it with."
Television
Quoting from RMS: "As a child, I was a TV addict. When I went away to college, I was worried that if I had a TV I would watch it, so I decided it was better not to have one. And I have never had a TV as an adult."
About me: 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.
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.
A thirty-two bit extension and GUI shell to a sixteen bit patch to an eight bit operating system originally coded for a four bit microprocessor and sold by a two-bit company that can't stand one bit of competition.
Peace Sunday, June 5, 1982, Rose Bowl, no nukes - nuclear disarmament - stop nuclear madness concert - NYC - Central Park - June 12, 1982, 1,000,000 person march and rally for Nuclear Freeze. Photography and presentation by Curtis Rainbow. 'Give Peace a Chance' music by Achim Schultz. Inspiration by Yoko Ono. Dedicated to John Lennon.
Buenas tardes. Es un gran honor poder comentar algo aqui. Me gustaria expresar mi miedo por el arma mas poderosa de los gobiernos: la mala informacion. Ahora parece que todos quieran unirse al codigo abierto, pero es una farsa que no pretende otra cosa que eclipsar el autentico movimiento por la libertad, hacer ke la verdad sea mentira y la mentira verdad. Soy el uniko ke se da kuenta? Larga vida a GNU CON o SIN linux.
Runs great. Much better than XP. It can even use my old music library.
It's time for this to be mainstream.
Eventually I am starting a project, where I will help people migrate to Ubuntu instead of Windows 7. I will tutorial them on the differences between the old system and the superior system, and teach them how to use Linux more efficiently. I will even write some pamphlets to give of about basic user skills.
I will also try and see if it's possible to make scripts that can install drivers and configure things that wouldn't work previously, i.e. like how my old laptop's sound wouldn't work correctly. someone had made a script for that, and other features of it, I intend on doing that for other computers I work on.
Just a couple more reasons all dinosaurs will die.
"The worst illiterate is the political illiterate, he doesn't hear, doesn't speak, nor participates in the political events. He doesn't know the cost of life, the price of the bean, of the fish, of the flour, of the rent, of the shoes and of the medicine, all depends on political decisions. The political illiterate is so stupid that he is proud and swells his chest saying that he hates politics. The imbecile doesn't know that, from his political ignorance is born the prostitute, the abandoned child, and the worst thieves of all, the bad politician, corrupted and flunky of the national and multinational companies. " Bertolt Brecht
