Richard Stallman is the founder of the Gnu Project, launched in 1984 to develop the free operating system GNU (an acronym for "GNU's Not Unix"), and thereby give computer users the freedom that most of them have lost. GNU is free software: everyone is free to copy it and redistribute it, as well as to make changes either large or small. He is the principal or initial author of GNU Emacs, the GNU C Compiler, the GNU Debugger GDB and parts of other packages. He is also president of the Free Software Foundation (FSF).
Don Rosenberg's review of
Larry Rosen's book, Open
Source Licensing, did
double-duty as a platform
for FUD about the GNU
GPL. The GNU General
Public License (GNU GPL
for short) was not the
first free software
license, but was the
first to embody the
concept of 'co...
The defeat of the EU
software patenting
directive, writes Richard
Stallman, only provides a
breathing space, in which
programmers and consumers
should gather forces.
This battle has
implications far beyond
the software field. Our
years-long fight has
shown how und...
Richard Stallman,
President of the Free
Software Foundation,
contends that the FSF's
views have been
misrepresented elsewhere
by Maureen O'Gara and
hastens to set the record
straight: 'The idea that
the GNU General Public
License would never stand
up in court is s...
'Last year IBM took a
significant step forward
in cooperation with the
free software community
by offering blanket
licenses for 500 of its
patents to all free
software developers,'
writes Richard Stallman.
He continues: 'Recently
Sun made an announcement
that supe...
Computer users need to be
taught to value freedom,
says Richard Stallman, so
they will defend it - and
recognizing the value of
freedom yourself is the
first step in helping to
do this.
'Since Joe Barr's article
criticized my dealings
with SIGLINUX, I would
like to set the record
straight about what
actually occurred, and
state my reasons.' (1,900
words)