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Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone.

Richard Stallman

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Richard Stallman
Age: 71
Born: 1953
Born: March 16
Activist
Blogger
Computer Scientist
Engineer
Free Sofware Activist
Inventor
Programmer
Manhattan borough
New York City
Richard M. Stallman
rms
Richard Matthew Stallman
St. iGNUcius
Chief GNUisance
Thinking
Like
Geeks
Geek
Ignore
Leave
Alone
Politics
Think

More quotes by Richard Stallman

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I'm the last survivor of a dead culture. And I don't really belong in the world anymore. And in some ways I feel I ought to be dead.
Richard Stallman
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Free software' is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of 'free' as in 'free speech,' not as in 'free beer'.
Richard Stallman
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If programmers deserve to be rewarded for creating innovative programs, by the same token they deserve to be punished if they restrict the use of these programs.
Richard Stallman
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Without absolute certainty, what do we do? We do the best we can. Injustice is happening now suffering is happening now. We have choices to make now. To insist on absolute certainty before starting to apply ethics to life decisions is a way of choosing to be amoral.
Richard Stallman
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If ebooks mean that readers' freedom must either increase or decrease, we must demand the increase.
Richard Stallman
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The principal lesson of Emacs is that a language for extensions should not be a mere extension language. It should be a real programming language, designed for writing and maintaining substantial programs. Because people will want to do that!
Richard Stallman
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For personal reasons, I do not browse the web from my computer. (I also have not net connection much of the time.) To look at page I send mail to a demon which runs wget and mails the page back to me. It is very efficient use of my time, but it is slow in real time.
Richard Stallman
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Whether gods exist or not, there is no way to get absolute certainty about ethics. Without absolute certainty, what do we do? We do the best we can.
Richard Stallman
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Today many people are switching to free software for purely practical reasons. That is good, as far as it goes, but that isn't all we need to do! Attracting users to free software is not the whole job, just the first step.
Richard Stallman
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My favorite programming languages are Lisp and C. However, since around 1992 I have worked mainly on free software activism, which means I am too busy to do much programming. Around 2008 I stopped doing programming projects.
Richard Stallman
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I'm always happy when I'm protesting.
Richard Stallman
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Fighting patents one by one will never eliminate the danger of software patents, any more than swatting mosquitoes will eliminate malaria.
Richard Stallman
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Somebody is saying this is inevitable – and whenever you hear somebody saying that, it's very likely to be a set of businesses campaigning to make it true.
Richard Stallman
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Giving the Linus Torvalds Award to the Free Software Foundation is a bit like giving the Han Solo Award to the Rebel Alliance.
Richard Stallman
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Once GNU is written, everyone will be able to obtain good system software free, just like air.
Richard Stallman
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Sharing knowledge is the most fundamental act of friendship. Because it is a way you can give something without loosing something.
Richard Stallman
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It is hard to write a simple definition of something as varied as hacking, but I think what these activities have in common is playfulness, cleverness, and exploration. Thus, hacking means exploring the limits of what is possible, in a spirit of playful cleverness. Activities that display playful cleverness have hack value.
Richard Stallman
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Writing non-free software is not an ethically legitimate activity, so if people who do this run into trouble, that's good! All businesses based on non-free software ought to fail, and the sooner the better.
Richard Stallman
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Proprietary software tends to have malicious features. The point is with a proprietary program, when the users dont have the source code, we can never tell. So you must consider every proprietary program as potential malware.
Richard Stallman
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So, make a real effort to avoid getting sucked into all the expensive lifestyle habits of typical Americans. Because if you do that, then people with the money will dictate what you do with your life.
Richard Stallman