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 (including the most commonly used ls).

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