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Richard Stallman

Richard Stallman
Richard Matthew Stallman
Richard Matthew Stallman
Birth name Richard Matthew Stallman
Nickname (s) RMS
Birth 16 March 1953 (1953-03-16) (age 57)
Manhattan , New York
Nationality Flag of the United States U.S.
Degree (s) Harvard University
Activity (s) Home (s) President-volunteer Free Software Foundation

Richard Matthew Stallman (born in Manhattan on 16 March 1953 ), also known under the initials RMS, is a programmer and advocate of free software. He is behind the project GNU and the GNU General Public License as known by the acronym GPL, which he wrote with attorney Eben Moglen. He popularized the term copyleft . The time allocated to programming is still dedicated to GNU Emacs, though he no longer lead maintainer since February 2008. He earns part of his life with the hallmarks of speaker that gives him the opportunity or the price they gave him.

What free software?
There are four essential freedoms: 0 / Running the code, 1 / The study and edition of the code ...
2 / The sharing of source code, 3 / sharing changes.
If these four freedoms are fulfilled then we have free software.
Otherwise, the developer has the power to the user, which is an injustice.
If you want freedom, you must reject proprietary software.

Summary

Biography

Richard Matthew Stallman was born in Manhattan on 16 March 1953. With strong capabilities in science, he regularly attends meetings of young people passionate about science. It uses a computer for the first time during his high school years in 1969. The following summer, at the end of high school, he was hired by the Science Center of IBM in New York and tackles writing his first program, a preprocessor for the programming language PL / I for computers IBM 360.

In 1971 , then a student in physics and mathematics at the Harvard University where he obtained excellent results, it becomes hacker Department research artificial intelligence from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for years. He eventually quit his studies at Harvard to devote himself solely to the lineup. He teaches at MIT's hacker ethic: the sharing of knowledge, denial of the authority and perfectionism. However, little by little, the atmosphere of early changes and it is increasingly rejected by his peers who accept positions in the companies creating proprietary software. He decides to keep it updated by itself the features of the Lisp machine which had come under the aegis of two companies: Symbolics and LMI. For months alone against dozens of developers, from the documentation, it manages to fulfill this project, one that will be recognized by his colleagues.

Everything changes in the early 1980's. When the printer Xerox 's lab began to have trouble stuffing it decides to upgrade the driver to resolve the existing problem. He is then surprised that it is only available as a binary , the source code is unavailable and nobody wants to provide it. He understands that the hacker ethic is disappearing and that we must act. This explains in part the GNU project's design a few months later after a message posted on Usenet.

Emacs

The AI Lab of MIT had TECO in the 1970s, a text editor running in the background. Text editing required long chains of command, that is to say, a fairly large capacity for abstraction from the user. In 1976, R. Stallman finds the text editor E Artificial Intelligence Laboratory of Stanford University , considered the first software for word processing wysiwyg , to assess the real-time screen changes. R. Stallman then decided to improve Teco, to bring him the same functionality. It implements key combinations Control + Letter running chains of command Teco. This improvement allows hackers to save command strings long and complex and have it call with a simple keyboard shortcut.

This expanded version of Teco led the AI Lab hackers to program a huge amount of macros. This abundance and diversity of personal macros have started to use Teco different on each terminal, with incompatibilities and a time of learning more and longer when we changed the terminal.

With Guy Steele , Richard Stallman began to reorganize all orders in a sytme unified, more universal. The result is called Emacs , which stands for Editing Macros. It is always possible to add new commands, but they no longer affect the original software, which is identical for all users. Stallman wrote a rule in the source code: users were free to modify and redistribute the code, provided in return to repay the extensions to the community they wrote. He spends as a social contract with all the hackers who make a macro to the building.

The GNU Project

In September 1983 , Richard Stallman announced the development of an operating system free that he called GNU , which aims to be a free replacement for Unix. The recursive acronym GNU stands for GNU's Not Unix (GNU's Not UNIX "). Soon after, he created the Free Software Foundation (FSF), a nonprofit organization that will allow the hiring of programmers and the establishment of a legal infrastructure for the free software community. In January 1984 he quit his job at MIT to devote himself full time to the GNU project. In 1985 , Stallman published the GNU Manifesto , in which he made known the motives and objectives of the project and seek the support of the global IT community.

To ensure that all software developed for the free operating system GNU remain free, Richard Stallman popularized the concept of copyleft (invented by Don Hopkins ), a clever use of copyright to ensure legal protection the four fundamental freedoms of computer users as defined by the FSF.

In 1989 , the first version of the GNU General Public License is issued. This license will be used to protect the bulk of the GNU system is so advanced, but still incomplete. Indeed, in 1990 , most parts of GNU are ready, except the system kernel (or kernel). At this time, the FSF started developing the Hurd , but its development will prove to be long (and still is not finalized).

The birth of the Linux kernel in 1991 (after it is released under the GPL) allows, by combining it with GNU tools, train the operating system GNU / Linux. This designation is important because it allows Richard Stallman among others that is not obscured the GNU project's goal: to allow the use of a fully free and guarantee fundamental freedoms in general.

Since the early 1990's , Richard is a regular victim of sore wrists, preventing it from contributing code as it did before. Currently he is involved primarily spread freedoms of Free Software throughout the world holding conferences or actions against local laws. His relations with the protagonists of the movement became increasingly difficult. The incarnation of Linus Torvalds as the savior of modern computing - belief in the media through the popularity of the Linux project - annoy RMS. Not only because Linus himself refused that role but also because, for historical reasons and logical struggle flawless since the beginning of the movement, it should also be given to him. Others like Eric Raymond accuse discredit the project in the eyes of businesses. This launched the term " open source "as opposed to Richard to highlight the technical aspect rather than the ethical. Having always been adamant about respecting the original ideology, Richard opposes this term because it is confusing and freedoms relegated to lowest priority.

Facts

  • In 1999 , Richard Stallman launched in The Free Universal Encyclopedia and Learning Resource , the ideas underlying .
  • Richard Stallman wrote the Free Software Song , anthem of free software.
  • He wrote the new law to read , a warning is happening in a future where technology copy control are used to restrict the reading of books.
  • He speaks fluent English and French quite fluently Spanish , and some Indonesian.
  • He repeatedly said "I can explain the philosophical basis of free software in three words: liberty, equality, fraternity. Freedom, because users are free. Equality, because they all have the same freedoms. Brotherhood because we encourage everyone to cooperate in the community " .
  • He defends the cause of free software to the Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa December 12, 2006 .
  • U.S. journalist Sam Williams devoted a biography, Free as in freedom , Stallman has never agreed to. Community Framasoft asking their assistance for a French edition of this biography, he agreed to write the foreword if they can annotate the original widely .
  • The asteroid 9982 Stallman was named in honor of Richard Stallman, the numbered asteroid 9965 was named the project GNU.
  • Richard Stallman launched at Berga first street free software in the world July 3, 2010 .

Awards

Richard Stallman at Wikimania 2005 in Frankfurt am Main in Germany.

Richard Stallman has received numerous awards during his life, including:

References

  1. Copyleft is a play on English words referring to the concept of copyright, which could translate into French by speaking of copyleft by reference to copyright
  2. RMS at The Canteen
  3. Interview with Richard Stallman by Program!
  4. Dialogues with Richard Stallman
  5. Preview video of a conference in Paris of free capital in 2007 where he connects these three terms the "four essential freedoms".
  6. Matignon locks against Richard Stallman , PcInpact.com
  7. (es) Interview with President of Ecuador 12 December 2006.
  8. http://torrents.rmll.info/table.html # 21
  9. William Deleurence, " A Software-Free Street opened in a Spanish city , 01net, 2010. Accessed December 29, 2010
  10. YouTube - RMS was awarded his honorary degree at Lakehead
  11. Agora Online - Honorary Doctorate Recipients

See also

Bibliography


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