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[edit]
„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[edit]
- http://stallman.org, see the inclusion into feeds / Richard Stallman political notes
