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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.

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
Masters
Choose
Freedom
Proprietary
Means
Computing
Able
Packages
Mean
Software
Master
Areas

More quotes by Richard Stallman

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Anything that prevents you from being friendly, a good neighbour, is a terror tactic.
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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.
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I'm always happy when I'm protesting.
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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.
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The GNU GPL was not designed to be open source.
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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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Snow is so beautiful, it doesn't have to be useful.
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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.
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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'.
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Android is a major step towards an ethical, user-controlled, free-software portable phone, but there is a long way to go.
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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.
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There is no system but GNU and Linux is one of it's kernels
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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.
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You can use any editor you want, but remember that vi vi vi is the text editor of the beast.
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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.
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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.
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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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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.
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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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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.
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