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Creativity can be a social contribution, but only in so far as society is free to use the results.

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
Contribution
Creativity
Results
Society
Free
Use
Social

More quotes by 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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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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Android is a major step towards an ethical, user-controlled, free-software portable phone, but there is a long way to go.
Richard Stallman
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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.
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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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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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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I suppose many people will continue moving towards careless computing, because there's a sucker born every minute.
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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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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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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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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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
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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 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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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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Laws that oppress people have no moral authority.
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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Playfully doing something difficult, whether useful or not, that is hacking.
Richard Stallman
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The interesting thing about cloud computing is that we've redefined cloud computing to include everything that we already do.
Richard Stallman