Richard Stallman



Richard Stallman is the founder of the GNU Project, launched in 1984 to develop the free software operating system GNU. The name ``GNU'' is a recursive acronym for GNU's Not Unix.

GNU is free software: everyone is free to copy it and redistribute it, as well as to make changes either large or small. Non-free software keeps users divided and helpless, forbidden to share it and unable to change it. A free operating system is essential for people to be able to use computers in freedom.

Today, Linux-based variants of the GNU system, based on the kernel Linux developed by Linus Torvalds, are in widespread use. There are estimated to be some 20 million users of GNU/Linux systems today.

Richard Stallman is the principal author of the GNU Compiler Collection, a portable optimizing compiler which was designed to support diverse architectures and multiple languages. The compiler now supports over 30 different architectures and 7 programming languages.

Stallman also wrote the GNU symbolic debugger (gdb), GNU Emacs, and various other programs for the GNU operating system.

Quote
„Every nonfree program has a lord, a master--and if you use the program, he is your master.“

(Richard Stallman, Interview LinuxDevCenter 22.12.2004)

also see: Free Software Foundation, FSF, GNU, Linux, Debian

Links

 * http://stallman.org


 * http://fsf.org (Free Software Foundation)


 * http://gnu.org


 * http://www.stallman.org/#serious


 * kerneltrap Interview with RMS


 * Bill Gates and other communists

Interwiki
Richard Stallman

DeWikipedia:Richard Stallman