Richard Stallmann
Richard Matthew Stallman (Manhattan, New York, March 16, 1953), often abbreviated as "rms", is an American physicist, programmer, activist and founder of the free software movement, the GNU operating system, and the Free Software Foundation.
His notable achievements as a programmer include making the GNU Emacs text editor, the GCC compiler, the GDB debugger, and the GNU Make build language, all under the rubric of the GNU Project. However, he is mainly known for establishing a moral, political and legal framework for free software: an alternative development and distribution model to proprietary software. He is also the inventor of the concept of copyleft (although not of the term): a legal method to license works covered by copyright, in such a way that their use and modification (as well as their derivatives) always remain permitted.
Her innovative work and activism around free software and digital rights have earned her numerous awards; including more than a dozen honorary doctorates and professors, the prestigious MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, the Pioneer Award from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and several ACM Awards. He is a member of the internet hall of fame.
Biography
Richard Matthew Stallman was born in New York City in 1953 to a Jewish family, the son of Alice Lippman and Daniel Stallman. His first experience with computers was at the IBM Science Center in New York when he was in college. preparatory. He was hired for a summer to write a numerical analysis program in Fortran. He completed the job after a couple of weeks, and spent the rest of the summer writing a text editor in the APL programming language. Stallman spent the summer of his high school graduation writing another program, a preprocessor for the APL programming language. PL/1 programming on the IBM S/360.
During this time, Stallman was also a volunteer laboratory assistant in the biology department at Rockefeller University. Although he was already entering a physics or mathematics major, his Rockefeller teacher tutor thought he might be a biologist in the future.
Harvard and MIT
In 1971, as a freshman physics student at Harvard University, Stallman became a hacker at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he worked maintaining the system. house operating system: the Incompatible Time-sharing System (ITS). He was known for his high performance in Math 55: Harvard's most advanced undergraduate mathematics course. He graduated with honors in 1974 from this university. He completed a year of PhD in physics at MIT, dropping out of the program to concentrate on programming himself in the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
In 1976 while working as a research assistant to Gerald Sussman, he co-published with Sussman an influential paper on a truth-maintenance system (TMS) called dependency-directed backtracking. directed by dependencies), for the purpose of solving electrical circuits by computer. It was pioneering work on intelligent backpropagation for the constraint satisfaction problem. As of 2009, the algorithm introduced by Stallman and Sussman remains the most general and powerful form of intelligent backpropagation. The constraint learning technique, whereby partial search results are saved for reuse in the future, was also described for the first time in the same article.
In the 1980s, the hacker culture that made up Stallman's life began to dissolve under the pressure of commercialization in the software industry. In particular, other AI Lab hackers founded the company Symbolics, which was actively trying to replace the Lab's free software with its own proprietary software.
Between 1982 and 1983, Stallman single-handedly doubled down on efforts by Symbolics programmers to prevent them from acquiring a monopoly on the lab's computers. At the time, he was the last of his generation of hackers in the lab. When he attempted to upgrade the firmware of the lab's new printers as he had done before, the manufacturer asked him to sign a non-disclosure agreement ), and to take other actions. that he considered betrayals of his ethical principles. Fed up with what he called a growing "hoarding of software" In the industry, on September 27, 1983 Stallman announced in various Usenet newsgroups the start of the GNU project, which sought to create a completely free operating system for the latest PC microcomputers.
On September 16, 2019, he left his unpaid position as a scientist and visiting professor at MIT and, resigning as president of the FSF, Geoffrey Knauth would be announced as successor to the presidency on August 5, 2020.
GNU Initiative
The new operating system would be portable to prevent it from falling into obsolescence, as happened with ITS. Stallman resigned from his job at MIT in order to release copyrights to his new software, though the lab offered to host the project.
The initial announcement of the GNU project was followed in 1985 by the publication of the GNU Manifesto, in which Stallman stated his intentions and motivations for creating a free alternative to the Unix operating system, which he called GNU (GNU Is Not Unix), pronounced in a similar way to ñu, in English (hence the drawings-logos that represent it). Shortly thereafter he founded the non-profit Free Software Foundation to coordinate the effort. Not wanting to leave his new software in the public domain, Stallman ended up inventing the legal recourse of copyleft, which crystallized in the GNU General Public License (commonly known as the "GPL") in 1989. Most of the GNU system, except for the core, was completed around the same time. In 1991, Linus Torvalds released the Linux kernel under the terms of the GPL. He worked to make GNU and Linux mutually compatible, completing a one hundred percent functional system: the GNU/Linux operating system.
Stallman insists on using the term "free software", and not open source, because the goal of his project is to grant freedom and rights to computer users. Open source discourse, by contrast, seeks to avoid talking about such programs in moral terms. He also looks for it to say & # 34;GNU / Linux & # 34; and not just "Linux" when talking about the operating system (see Controversy over the name GNU/Linux). For Stallman, free software does not mean that it is free. He also believes that proprietary software should not be used in teaching.
Controversies
Richard Stallman's political and moral motivations have made him a controversial figure. Many influential programmers [citation needed ] who find themselves in agreement with the concept of code sharing differ with moral stances, personal philosophy, or the language Stallman uses to describe the positions of him. One result of these disputes led to the establishment of the open source movement.
The person
That companies have a special influence on politics means that democracy is sick. The purpose of democracy is to ensure that the rich do not have a proportional influence on their wealth. And if they have more influence than you or me, that means that democracy is failing. The laws that are obtained in this way have no moral authority, but the ability to harm.Richard Stallman
Until 2019 Stallman held an unpaid research position at MIT. He has declared himself "an atheist of Jewish descent" and often wears a button that reads "Judge God" (& # 34; Impeach God & # 34;).He denies being an anarchist despite his caution of some laws and the fact that he has & # 34; vigorously defended the privacy of users and his own vision of the freedom of software & # 34;.
Stallman refers to cell phones as "surveillance and tracking devices" and 'Stalin's Dream' He refuses to own a cell phone because its hardware is wholly or partly controlled by the phone companies, rather than the users. He also avoids using a key card to get into his office, as these systems keep track of every place and time someone enters the building. Except for a few websites related to his work at GNU and the FSF, he usually does not browse the web directly from his personal computer in order to avoid being connected to his browsing history.. Instead, he uses wget or similar programs that retrieve content from web servers and then send the content to his email.More recently, he has stated that he started browsing the web directly through Tor.
His image and hobbies have become iconic in hacker culture, even appearing in comic strips.
Currently Stallman is in charge of disseminating the Free Software ideology throughout the world through talks and conferences. In addition to his native language, he is fluent in Spanish and French and has given numerous lectures in Spanish-speaking countries. During his talks he appears with a second personality that corresponds to San Ignucio with whom he usually blesses people's computers as part of a joke.
Activism
Stallman has written numerous essays on software freedom and has been a political speaker for the free software movement since the early 1990s. Speeches he has given regularly are entitled "The GNU Project and the free software movement", "The dangers of software patents", "Copyright and globalization in the age of computer networks".
Stallman's staunch advocacy of free software inspired the creation of Virtual Richard M. Stallman (vrms), software that analyzes packages installed on a Debian GNU/Linux system, and reports those that are not free. Stallman disagrees with part of this project's definition of free software.
In 1999 he promoted the creation of a free encyclopedia, the GNUPedia, considered a direct predecessor of Wikipedia. The resulting project was eventually withdrawn in favor of the latter, which had similar goals and was counting on greater success.
Stallman is a tireless traveler. He has visited at least 65 countries, mostly to talk about free software and the GNU project According to Stallman, the free software movement has a lot in common with that led by Mahatma Gandhi.
In April 2006, Stallman carried a sign protesting proprietary software - "Don't buy ATI, the enemy of your freedom" - in a speech delivered by that firm's representative, leading to a call the police. ATI later merged with AMD Corporation and took steps to make its hardware documentation available for use by the free software community.
In August 2006, in meetings with the government of the Indian state of Kerala, he convinced officials to divest proprietary software in state schools. This led to the landmark decision to migrate all computers in 12,500 high schools from Windows to a free software operating system.
In Venezuela, Stallman has delivered public speeches and promoted the adoption of free software at state oil company PDVSA, the municipal government, and the nation's military. In meetings with Hugo Chávez and in public speeches, Stallman criticized some policies on television broadcasting, freedom of expression rights, and privacy. Stallman was on the Advisory Council of the Telesur television network since its launch, but resigned in February 2011 criticizing pro-Gaddafi propaganda during the Arab Spring.
Following personal meetings, Stallman obtained statements in favor of the free software movement from Indian President Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, French 2007 presidential candidate Ségolène Royal, and then-President of Ecuador Rafael Correa.
On November 30, 2012, Stallman gave the keynote address at the Goiano Free Software Forum in Brazil, talking about free software migration success stories in government, business, and universities.
Stallman has participated in protests against the use of software patents, DRMs, and proprietary software. Linus Torvalds has criticized Stallman for what he considers "black or white" thinking.
Currently, he maintains a critical position against Facebook for massively supplying information about its users to government agencies such as the NSA in the United States and companies of all kinds.
Rights and new technologies
Stallman has regularly given a conference titled "Copyrights versus Community," where he reviews the state of DRMs and speaks out against certain products and companies that use them.. His view on DRMs is epitomized by the FSF's Flawed by Design campaign. In his talks, he manifests himself in favor of a & # 34; reduced copyright & # 34; and suggests a 10-year limit on copyright. Instead of restrictions on sharing, he suggests supporting authors using a tax and distributing revenue based on the cube roots of their popularity. This would ensure that "the successful are not stars" and receive, however, a larger reward compared to the private copying levy associated with copyright defenders. Another option would be an anonymous micropayment system for people to directly support authors.
Stallman advocates that any form of non-commercial exchange of copies be considered a violation of copyright. He has advocated civil disobedience in a commentary on the Sinde Law.
He has also supported the International Music Score Library Project, to come back online after being taken down on October 19, 2007, following a cease and desist order from Universal Edition.
Stallman highlights the dangers that some e-books have compared to paper books. One example is Amazon's Kindle e-reader, which prevents e-books from being copied and allows the company to remotely delete content. He sees such developments as a big step backwards from paper books, as they are less easy to use, copy, lend to others, or sell, and Kindles can't be bought anonymously. The story of him & # 34; The right to read & # 34; offers an image of a dystopian future in which the right to share books is impeded. He objects to many of the terms within the end user license agreements that accompany such devices.
Stallman discourages the use of various storage technologies, such as DVD or Blu-ray video discs, because these standards were designed to encrypt content to the disadvantage of customers. He views manufacturers' use of data encryption (to force the user to view certain promotional material) as a conspiracy.
Recognized the Sony BMG rootkit copy protection scandal as a criminal act. Stallman supports a boycott of Sony over his legal action against George Hotz.
Resignation from MIT and Free Software Foundation
In September 2019 Stallman resigned from his position as a researcher for the MAC Project at MIT and, as president of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), on August 5, 2020, Geoffrey Knauth would be announced as his replacement.
In March 2021 during the LibrePlanet event, Stallman surprisingly announced his reinstatement to the FSF board of directors. Given this, various free software groups presented an open letter demanding the departure of RMS and the entire board of directors of the FSF.
Awards
Stallman has received numerous awards and recognitions for his work, including:
- In 1986 he became a vital honorary member of the Chalmers Computer Society.
- A membership in the MacArthur Foundation in 1990.
- The Grace Hopper Award of the Association for Computing Machinery in 1991 for his work in the original Emacs editor.
- A Doctorate Honoris Cause Royal Institute of Technology of Sweden in 1996.
- The Pioneer award of the Electronic Frontier Foundation in 1998.
- The Yuri Rubinsky memorial award in 1999.
- The Takeda award in 2001.
- In 2001 he received the Honoris Causa Doctorate from the University of Glasgow.
- In 2002 he obtained the Membresy of the National Academy of Engineering of the United States of America.
- In 2003 he received the Doctorate Honoris Causa granted by the Vrije Universiteit Brussel.
- In 2003 he received the title of honorary professor at the National University of Engineering of Peru.
- In 2004, he received an Honoris Causa Doctorate from the National University of Salta (Argentina).
- In 2004 he received the honorary professorship from the Technological University of Peru.
- In 2005 he received the Fundazione Pistoletto Award.
- First prize winner of the International Free Knowledge Extremadura Award awarded by the Extremadura Board on 7 February 2007 in Badajoz in the framework of the III International Free Software Conference.
- Doctor Honoris Causa of the University of Los Angeles of Chimbote in Peru in 2007.
- Doctor Honoris Causa of the University of Pavia, in 2007.
- Doctor Honoris Causa of the National University of Trujillo in Peru in 2008.
- Honorary PhD in Science at Lakehead University in Canada in 2009.
- Doctorate Honoris Causa awarded in 2011 by the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba (Argentina).
- In 2012 he received the title of honorary professor by César Vallejo University of Trujillo of Peru.
- In 2012 he received the Honoris Causa Doctorate from the Latin American Cima University of Tacna of Peru.
- In 2012 he received the Doctorate Honoris Causa from José Faustino Sánchez Carrió University of Peru.
- In 2013 it is installed in the Hall of the Internet Fame.
- In 2014 he received an Honoris Causa Doctorate from Concordia University in Montreal.
- 2015: ACM Software System Award "For the Development and Leadership of GCC".
- In 2016 he received an Honoris Causa Doctorate from Pierre and Marie Curie University.
- In 2017 he received an Honoris Causa Doctorate from the National University of Jujuy (Argentina).
- In 2018 he received an Honoris Causa Doctorate from the National University of Tucumán (Argentina).
Posts
Articles in scientific journals:
- Sussman, Gerald Jay; Stallman, Richard M. (1975). «Heuristic Techniques in Computer-Aided Circuit Analysis». Transactions on Circuits and Systems (IEEE) 22 (11): 857-865. ISSN 0098-4094. doi:10.1109/TCS.1975.1083985.
- Stallman, Richard M.; Sussman, Gerald Jay (1977). «Forward Reasoning and Dependency-Directed Backtracking In a System for Computer-Aided Circuit analysis». Artificial Intelligence (Elsevier) 9 (2): 135-196. doi:10.1016/0004-3702(77)90029-7.
Manuals:
- Stallman, Richard M (1981). EMACS: The Extensible, Customizable, Self-Documenting Display Editor. Cambridge Massachusetts: MIT: MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory publication. AIM-519A.
- Stallman, Richard M (2002). GNU Emacs Manual: Sixteenth edition for GNU Emacs Version 21. Boston, Massachusetts: GNU Press. ISBN 1-882114-85-X. Archived from the original on 31 July 2009. Consultation on 18 July 2009.
- Stallman, Richard M; McGrath, Roland; & Smith, Paul D (2004). GNU Make: A Program for Directed Compilation. Boston, Massachusetts: GNU Press. ISBN 1-882114-83-3. Archived from the original on 23 February 2009. Consultation on 18 July 2009.
Essay compilations:
- Gay, Joshua (2015). Free Software, Free Society: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman. Boston, Massachusetts: GNU Press. ISBN 1-882114-98-1.
- Stallman, Richard M. (2004). Free software for a free society. Dream dealers. ISBN 9788493355517. Consultation on April 25, 2017.
Biography:
- Williams, Sam (2002). Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software. ISBN 0-596-00287-4.
- Free as in Freedom (2.0): Richard Stallman and the Free Software Revolution (2.a edition with reviews by Richard M. Stallman). 2010. ISBN 978-0-9831592-1-6.