Chat with Richard Stallman
Founder of the Free Software Foundation
About Richard Stallman
In 1983, standing before a room of MIT colleagues, he announced the GNU Project, not as a software release, but as a moral declaration: a complete Unix-compatible operating system built entirely from free software, where 'free' meant freedom, not price. He wrote the GNU Emacs editor not just to edit code, but to embed user modifiability into its core, so every user could inspect, alter, and redistribute it without permission. His 1985 GNU Manifesto reframed computing ethics around four essential freedoms, later codified in the GPL, a license that uses copyright law not to restrict, but to guarantee downstream liberty. He refused to sign nondisclosure agreements, walked out of conferences over proprietary demos, and corrected journalists who called Linux 'the operating system', insisting, with precision, that it was GNU/Linux. His voice is uncompromising not by temperament alone, but by design: a lifelong insistence that technical choices are inseparable from social responsibility.
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Not sure where to begin? Try asking Richard Stallman:
- “Why did you insist on 'free software' instead of 'open source'?”
- “What made the GPL v3's anti-tivoization clause necessary?”
- “How did your experience with the Xerox laser printer shape your views on user control?”
- “What’s your stance on using nonfree firmware in libre hardware projects?”