Richard Stallman

American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

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Born 1953 · age 73United States

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Wikipedia
107 languages
Cross-language footprint
Age
73
Born 1953
Known for
Revolution OS
2001

Summary

Updated 2026-06-21

He wrote the licenses that let programmers share code without surrender — and spent forty years insisting software freedom is a moral duty, not a convenience. The GNU Project, the Free Software Foundation, the GPL: his architecture for a world where users control the machines.

Biography

About

Richard Matthew Stallman launched the GNU Project in September 1983 to build a Unix-like operating system made entirely of free software, kicking off the free software movement itself. He developed key GNU tools — the C Compiler, Debugger, GNU Emacs — and pioneered copyleft, using copyright law to guarantee users' rights to use, study, modify, and distribute code. In October 1985 he founded the Free Software Foundation and wrote all versions of the GNU General Public License, now the most widely used free software license. Since the mid-1990s he's spent most of his time advocating for software…

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from Richard Stallman

Richard Stallman

said1985

What they had in common was mainly love of excellence and programming. They wanted to make their programs that they used be as good as they could.

— Interview in Hackers — Wizards of the Electronic Age (1985)

Richard Stallman

said9 May 1978

Well, Geoff forwarded me a copy of the DEC message, and I eat my words. I sure would have minded it!

— Reaction to the first spam, after receiving a copy of it (9 May 1978) as quoted in "Reaction to the DEC Spam of 1978"

Richard Stallman

said8 May 1978

I didn't receive the DEC message, but I can't imagine I would have been bothered if I have. I get tons of uninteresting mail, and system announcements about babies born, etc.

— First reaction to reports of the first commercial "spam" email, sent by DEC salesman, Gary Thuerk (May 8, 1978), as quoted in "Reaction to

Richard Stallman

saidundated

GNU, which stands for Gnu's Not Unix, is the name for the complete Unix-compatible software system which I am writing so that I can give it away free to everyone who can use it.

Richard Stallman

saidundated