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Copying all or parts of a program is as natural to a programmer as breathing, and as productive. It ought to be as free.

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
Free
Programmer
Natural
Copying
Programmers
Productive
Breathing
Parts
Program
Ought

More quotes by Richard Stallman

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I did write some code in Java once, but that was the island in Indonesia.
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.
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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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I could have made money this way, and perhaps amused myself writing code. But I knew that at the end of my career, I would look back on years of building walls to divide people, and feel I had spent my life making the world a worse place.
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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Playfully doing something difficult, whether useful or not, that is hacking.
Richard Stallman
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Would a dating service for people on the net be frowned upon by DCA? I hope not. But even if it is, don't let that stop you from notifying me via net mail if you start one.
Richard Stallman
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Also, because schools must teach the spirit of goodwill, the habit of helping others around you, every class should have this rule: students, if you bring software to class you may not keep it for yourself.
Richard Stallman
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The GNU GPL was not designed to be open source.
Richard Stallman
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The most powerful programming language is Lisp. If you don't know Lisp (or its variant, Scheme), you don't appreciate what a powerful language is. Once you learn Lisp you will see what is missing in most other languages.
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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I never imagined that the Free Software Movement would spawn a watered-down alternative, the Open Source Movement, which would become so well-known that people would ask me questions about open source thinking that I work under that banner.
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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There is no system but GNU and Linux is one of it's kernels
Richard Stallman
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Now that corporations dominate society and write the laws, each advance or change in technology is an opening for them to further restrict or mistreat its users.
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
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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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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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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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Paying isn’t wrong, and being paid isn’t wrong. Trampling other people’s freedom and community is wrong, so the free software movement aims to put an end to it, at least in the area of software.
Richard Stallman