Hall of Fame

Richard M Stallman

The man struggling to open a bottle of water is Richard Stallman (nickname RMS). Born March 16, 1953, he is the founder of Free Software Foundation (FSF).

Stallman graduated from Harvard in 1974 with a BA in physics. He worked as a staff hacker at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab in his college years, Stallman's earlier accomplishments included developing the original Emacs, GNU Emacs, the GNU Compiler Collection, and the GNU Debugger

In 1983, he introduced the term Free Software. It advocates the freedom to use software, providing an alternative through licensing and lifting what proprietary software restricts. Now, end users have the choice of Free Software or Proprietary Software. In 1984, he founded the GNU project.

For software published under the various GNU GPL licenses, user can study the source code, adapt it to their needs, and redistribute it - modified or unmodified. The catch is - they must pass this freedom onward; like a recursive algorithm. Hence the GNU name (GNU is Not Unix.)

More than twenty years later, Richard Stallman is older but not wiser - he is still at it. Thanks to him and his supporters Free software today is a growing international phenomenon.

Recognitions

In 1990 he was awarded a Macarthur foundation fellowship
In 1991 he received the Grace Hopper award from the Association for Computing Machinery.
In 1996 an honorary doctorate from the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden.
In 1998 he received the Electronic Frontier Foundation's pioneer award along with Linus Torvalds.
In 1999 he received the Yuri Rubinski award.
In 2001 he received a second honorary doctorate, from the University of Glasgow,
In the same year, shared the Takeda award for social/economic betterment with Torvalds and Ken Sakamura.
In 2002 he was elected to the US National Academy of Engineering,
In 2003 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
In 2003 he received an honorary doctorate from the Free University of Brussels.
In 2004 received honorary professorship from the Universidad Nacional de Ingenieria in Peru,
In 2004 he received an honorary doctorate from the Universidad Nacional de Salta, in Argentina.

References

You can find out more than you wish to know about Richard Stallman on his personal web page or in wiki.

Sample Speeches

Speech on Software Patents- Barriers to development given at the University of Calgary, Canada. 18th May 2005. 120 mins in Ogg Theora format.

Verbatim copying and distribution of the entire speech recording are permitted provided this notice is preserved.

Speech topic What is Free Software? given at the National Center for High Performance Computing, Taiwan. 27th May 2005. 132 mins in Ogg Theora format.

Verbatim copying and distribution of the entire speech recording are permitted provided this notice is preserved.

For more audio and video recordings about Free Software philosophy, visit here.