Richard Stallman
{ RMS is a legend and overall a great human, but let's be reminded we
shouldn't be creating any [1]heroes or celebrities. ~drummyfish }
The great doctor Richard Matthew Stallman (RMS, also [2]GNU/Stallman,
chief GNUisance and saint IGNUcius, born 1953 in New York) is one of the
biggest figures in software [3]history, inventor of [4]free (as in
freedom) software, its lifelong advocate, founder of the [5]GNU project,
[6]Free Software Foundation, a great [7]hacker and the author of a famous
text editor [8]Emacs besides others. He is a non-religious [9]Jew and an
[10]atheist (though he is the highest saint of [11]Church Of Emacs), a man
who firmly stands behind his beliefs, who always acts in conformance with
them and who's been advocating for [12]ethics and user freedom in the
computing world. He has also been called the king of software [13]cloning,
for he started the wave of making free, ethical clones of [14]proprietary
programs. Stallman doesn't wear a [15]suit, he never shaves and doesn't
use a cellphone, he talks even if what he says is unpopular -- if he
didn't make history, these things alone would make him one of the most
based men of our time. However, on a completely serious note, let's not
make gods out of people -- Richard Stallman also does some very retarded
things, for example he plays along with the [16]fight culture and started
conforming to the [17]SJW newspeak, thumbs down on that.
_..._
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[18]ASCII art of Richard Stallman
Stallman's life along with free software's history is documented by a
free-licensed book named Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman's Crusade
for Free Software on which he collaborated. You can get it gratis e.g. at
[19]Project Gutenberg. You should read this!
Richard Stallman is also famous for having foreseen and foretold virtually
all the atrocities that [20]corporations would do with computer
technology, such as all the spying through cell phones, trade of personal
data and abusing secrecy and "[21]intellectual ownership" of source code
for bullying others, though to be honest it doesn't take a genius to
foresee that corporations will want to rape people as much as possible,
it's more of a surprise he was one of very few who did. The important
thing is he acted immediately he spotted this -- though corporations
indeed did go on to rape people anyway, Richard Stallman made some very
important steps early on to make the impact much less catastrophic
nowadays. We should be all grateful.
It seems that Stallman had at least one girlfriend; in the 1999 book
called Open Sources he says that he originally wanted to name the [22]HURD
kernel Alix after a [23]girl that was at the time his "sweetheart".
[24]tl;dr: At 27 as an employee at [25]MIT [26]AI labs Stallman had a bad
experience when trying to fix a Xerox printer who's [27]proprietary
software source code was made inaccessible; he also started spotting the
betrayal of hacker principles by others who decided to write proprietary
software -- he realized proprietary software was inherently wrong as it
prevented studying, improvement and sharing of software and enable abuse
of users. From 1982 he was involved in a "fight" against the Symbolics
company that pushed aggressive proprietary software; he was rewriting
their software from scratch to allow Lisp Machine users more freedom --
here he proved his superior programming skills as he was keeping up with
the whole team of Symbolics programmers. By 1983 his frustration reached
its peak and he announced his [28]GNU project on the [29]Usenet -- this
was a project to create a completely [30]free as in freedom [31]operating
system, an alternative to the proprietary [32]Unix system that would offer
its users freedom to use, study, modify and share the whole software, in
the hacker spirit. He followed by publishing a manifesto and establishing
the [33]Free Software Foundation. GNU and FSF popularized and standardized
the term [34]free (as in freedom) software, [35]copyleft and free
licensing, mainly with the [36]GPL license. In the 90s GNU adopted the
[37]Linux operating system kernel and released a complete version of the
GNU operating system -- these are nowadays known mostly as "Linux"
[38]distros. As a head of FSF and GNU Stallman more or less stopped
programming and started traveling around the world to give talks about
free software and has earned his status of one of the most important
people in software history.
Regarding [39]software Stallman has for his whole life strongly and
tirelessly promoted free software and [40]copyleft and has himself only
used free software; he has always practiced what he preached and led the
best example of how to live without [41]proprietary software. This in
itself is extremely amazing and rare, regardless of whether he ever
slipped (which we aren't aware of) or to what degree we agree with his
ideas; his moral strength and integrity is really what makes him special
among basically all other great people of recent centuries, it's really as
if he comes from a different time when people TRULY internally believed
something so much they would die for it, that they wouldn't sell even a
small part of that belief for any kind of personal benefit; this is
something that really puts him alongside the greatest philosophers such as
[42]Plato or [43]Socrates (who followed his own principles so much that he
voluntarily died for them).
Fun fact: there is a [44]package called [45]vrms, for virtual RMS, that
checks whether you have any non-free packages installed. Ironically it
seems to not even tolerate non-free documentation under [46]GFDL with
invariant sections, which is very correct but probably not something
Stallman himself would do since GFDL is basically his own invention :)
This said, we naturally also have to state we don't nearly agree with all
he says. For example he isn't too concerned about [47]bloat (judging by
the GNU software and his own creation, [48]Emacs) and he also doesn't care
that much about [49]free culture (some of his written works prohibit
modification, see [50]GFDL's "invariant seciotns", and his GNU project
allows proprietary non-functional data as long as they are not
"software"). Sadly he has also shown signs of being a [51]type A fail
personality by writing about some kind of [52]newspeak "gender neutral
language" and by seeming to be caught in a [53]fight culture. On his
website he also has an [54]American flag and claims to be a patriot, i.e.
leaning to nationalism and therefore [55]fascism. Nevertheless he
definitely can't be accused of populism or hypocrisy as he basically tells
what he considers to be the truth no matter what, and he is very
consistent in this. Some of his unpopular opinions (mostly those opposing
[56]pedophile witch hunt, with which we DO agree) brought him a lot of
trouble and an endless wrath of [57]SJWs. For this he was [58]cancelled
and in 2019 was forced to resigned from the position of president of the
FSF but continues to support it.
He is a weird guy, having been recorded on video eating dirt from his feet
before giving a lecture besides others -- another time he was even
recorded raging on stage after being stressed out but that's actually odd
-- he practically always keeps a calm, monotone, very rational speech
(much different from any politician or revolutionary). In the book Free as
in Freedom he admits he might be slightly [59]autistic. Nevertheless he's
extremely smart, has magna [60]cum laude degree in [61]physics from
Harvard, 10+ honorary doctorates, fluently speaks English, Spanish, French
and a little bit of Indonesian and has many times proven his superior
programming skills (even though he later stopped programming to fully work
on promoting the FSF). He is really good at public speaking, and that
despite the mentioned calmness of his speech -- here possibly his inner
autism shines because he just speaks in very simple but cold rational and
logical ways that everyone from an expert to a complete layman
understands, he rarely stops to say something like "ummm... wait", he's
just letting out carefully crafted sentences as if you were reading them
from a book, showing ways from facts to logical conclusions without cheap
rhetoric tricks like wild gesticulation, rising voice or using buzzwords
and strong terms. His interviews are however often awkward for the same
reasons: it's usually the interviewer asking a question and then waiting
15 minutes for Stallman to print out the whole answer without giving a
chance to be interrupted.
Stallman has a beautifully [62]minimalist website at
http://www.stallman.org where he actively comments on current news and
issues. He also made the famous free software song (well, only the lyrics,
the melody is taken from a Bulgarian folk song Sadi Moma) -- he often
performs it in public himself (he is pretty good at keeping the weird
rhythm of the song while at the same time also singing, that's
impressive).
Stallman has been critical of [63]capitalism though he probably isn't a
hardcore anticapitalist (he's an [64]American after all). [65]Wikidata
states he's a proponent of [66]alter-globalization (not completely against
globalization in certain areas but not supporting the current form of it).
In the book Free As In Freedom it is also mentioned that Stallman had
aversion to passwords and secrecy in general -- at MIT he used the
username RMS with the same password so that other people could easily log
in through his account and access [67]ARPANET (the predecessor of
[68]Internet). Indeed, we applaud this, the "[69]security" hysteria is
killing the computing world.
As [70]anarchists we of course despise the idea of worshiping people,
creating [71]heroes and cults of personalities, but the enormous
[72]historical significance of Stallman has to be stressed as a plain and
simple fact and though we may disagree with some of his methods and even
opinions, it's as clear as it can be that he acted [73]selflessly, in
favor of all people -- something that can be said about very few, if
anyone at all. Most other old time hackers, such as [74]Eric S. Ramyond
and [75]Rob Pike immediately abandoned all ideals of ethics and jumped the
capitalist train with the first sight of money, Stallman stayed opposed to
it, and for this he has our uttermost respect. Even though in our days his
name is overshadowed in the mainstream by rich businessman and creators of
commercially successful technology and even though we ourselves disagree
with Stallman on some points, in the future [76]history may well see
Stallman as perhaps the greatest man of the software era, and rightfully
so. Stallman isn't a mere creator of a commercially successful software
product or a successful politician, he is an extremely morally strong
philosopher, a great example to others, a prophet, someone who sees the
truth and shows it to people -- he brilliantly foresaw the course of
history and quickly defined ethics needed for the new era of mass
available programmable computers at the right time, before the hammer hit.
And not only that, he also basically alone established this ethics as a
standard IN SPITE of all the world's [77]corporations [78]fighting back,
in a field that back then was relatively obscure, unpopular in mainstream
and hence not much supported by any mass media. He is also extremely
unique in not pursuing self interest, in TRULY living his own philosophy,
dedicating his whole life to his cause and refusing to give in even
partially. All of this is at much higher level than simply becoming
successful and famous within the contemporary capitalist system, his life
effort is pure, true and timeless, unlike things achieved by pieces of
shit such as [79]Steve Jobs.
Is Richard Stallman a celebrity? This question is important to [80]us
because we dislike any celebrities. The answer is probably this: to a
certain level he is a celebrity (though not nearly a Hollywood level
celebrity, 99% of normal people never heard of him), but at least to a
similar level he is just a well known expert on certain things. So yes,
partially we have to dislike his celebrity part -- any worship of him as a
God is acceptable only as a [81]meme, we must never see him as a [82]hero.
He seems to be a very rare case of a mini celebrity that managed to keep
some morality, perhaps because his celebrity status, very uncommonly, came
to him more because he wasn't careful enough to avoid it rather than
because he actively pursued it. It's not an excuse -- if someone doesn't
want to become a celebrity, he cannot become one -- but it may be an
extenuating circumstance. This is to say: yes, it sucks he's a celebrity
to some degree, but he's probably at least among the least harmful ones.
See Also
* [83]John Gilmore
* [84]Alexandre Oliva
* [85]Jesus
* [86]Hagrid
* [87]Einstein
* [88]vrms
* [89]gentoo
* [90]Linus Torvalds
* [91]Alan Cox
* [92]Larry Wall
* [93]people
Links:
1. hero_culture.md
2. gnu.md
3. history.md
4. free_software.md
5. gnu.md
6. fsf.md
7. hacking.md
8. emacs.md
9. jew.md
10. atheism.md
11. church_of_emacs.md
12. ethics.md
13. clone.md
14. proprietary.md
15. suit.md
16. fight_culture.md
17. sjw.md
18. ascii_art.md
19. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/5768
20. corporation.md
21. intellectual_property.md
22. hurd.md
23. woman.md
24. tldr.md
25. mit.md
26. ai.md
27. proprietary.md
28. gnu.md
29. usenet.md
30. free_software.md
31. os.md
32. unix.md
33. fsf.md
34. free_software.md
35. copyleft.md
36. gpl.md
37. linux.md
38. distro.md
39. software.md
40. copyleft.md
41. proprietary.md
42. plato.md
43. socrates.md
44. package.md
45. vrms.md
46. gfdl.md
47. bloat.md
48. emacs.md
49. free_culture.md
50. gfdl.md
51. fail_ab.md
52. newspeak.md
53. fight_culture.md
54. usa.md
55. fascism.md
56. pedophilia.md
57. sjw.md
58. cancel_culture.md
59. autism.md
60. cum.md
61. physics.md
62. minimalism.md
63. capitalism.md
64. usa.md
65. wikidate.md
66. alter_globalization.md
67. arpanet.md
68. internet.md
69. security.md
70. anarchism.md
71. hero_culture.md
72. history.md
73. selflessness.md
74. esr.md
75. rob_pike.md
76. history.md
77. corporation.md
78. fight_culture.md
79. steve_jobs.md
80. lrs.md
81. meme.md
82. hero_culture.md
83. john_gilmore.md
84. alexandre_oliva.md
85. jesus.md
86. hagrid.md
87. einstein.md
88. vrms.md
89. gentoo.md
90. torvalds.md
91. alan_cox.md
92. larry_wall.md
93. people.md