Richard Stallman - DeveloPassion

# Richard Stallman ![[50 Resources/51 Attachments/51.03 Public/2026-02-10 Richard Stallman.jpg|400]] Richard Stallman (often known as RMS) is an American programmer and activist who launched the free software movement in 1983 with the [[GNU]] project. In 1985, he founded the [[Free Software Foundation]] (FSF) and authored the GNU General Public License (GPL), the most widely used free software license. His philosophy centers on software freedom as a matter of ethics, not just practicality. Stallman began his career at MIT's AI Lab in the 1970s, where he developed GNU Emacs and other foundational tools. He insists on the term "free software" (emphasizing freedom, not price) and distinguishes it from "[[Open Source]]," which he sees as missing the ethical point. His work laid the groundwork for [[Linux]] and modern open source ecosystems. ## The Four Freedoms Stallman defined free software through four essential freedoms: - **Freedom 0**: Run the program for any purpose - **Freedom 1**: Study and modify the source code - **Freedom 2**: Redistribute copies - **Freedom 3**: Distribute modified versions ## Key Contributions - **[[GNU is not Unix (GNU)]] Project** (1983): Operating system project providing free alternatives to Unix - **[[Free Software Foundation (FSF)]]** (1985): Organization promoting software freedom - **GPL License**: Copyleft license ensuring derivative works remain free - **GNU Emacs**: Influential extensible text editor - **GCC**: GNU Compiler Collection, foundational compiler suite - **GDB**: GNU Debugger ## References - https://stallman.org - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman - https://www.fsf.org ## Quotes  ## Books  ## Related - [[Free Software Foundation (FSF)]] - [[GNU is not Unix (GNU)]] - [[Open Source]] - [[Free and Open Source Software (FOSS)]] - [[Linux]] - [[Brian Fox]] - [[Linus Torvalds]]