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The desire to be rewarded for one's creativity does not justify depriving the world in general of all or part of that creativity.

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
Doe
World
Depriving
Rewarded
Justify
General
Creativity
Desire
Part

More quotes by 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.
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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.
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No person, no idea, and no religion deserves to be illegal to insult, not even the Church of Emacs.
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To be able to choose between proprietary software packages is to be able to choose your master. Freedom means not having a master.
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The GNU GPL was not designed to be open source.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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If in my lifetime the problem of non-free software is solved, I could perhaps relax and write software again. But I might instead try to help deal with the world's larger problems. Standing up to an evil system is exhilarating, and now I have a taste for it.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Value your freedom or you will lose it, teaches history. Don't bother us with politics, respond those who don't want to learn.
Richard Stallman
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I've read that male dolphins try to have sex with humans, and female apes solicit sex from humans. What is wrong with giving them what they want, if that's what turns you on, or even just to gratify them?
Richard Stallman
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In terms of effect on the world, it's very good that I've lived. And so I guess, if I could go back in time and prevent my birth, I wouldn't do it. But I sure wish I hadn't had so much pain.
Richard Stallman
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The idea of copyright did not exist in ancient times, when authors frequently copied other authors at length in works of non-fiction. This practice was useful, and is the only way many authors' works have survived even in part.
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.
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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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Anything that prevents you from being friendly, a good neighbour, is a terror tactic.
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