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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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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
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Without
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Life
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More quotes by 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.
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I suppose many people will continue moving towards careless computing, because there's a sucker born every minute.
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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.
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I did write some code in Java once, but that was the island in Indonesia.
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Programming is not a science. Programming is a craft.
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The GNU GPL was not designed to be open source.
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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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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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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.
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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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You can use any editor you want, but remember that vi vi vi is the text editor of the beast.
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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?
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Our mailing lists (and their repeater newsgroups) are only for the purpose of promoting proprietary software.
Richard Stallman
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If ebooks mean that readers' freedom must either increase or decrease, we must demand the increase.
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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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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.
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Playfully doing something difficult, whether useful or not, that is hacking.
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The interesting thing about cloud computing is that we've redefined cloud computing to include everything that we already do.
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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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