For Richard Stallman, using Free Software is more than a practical choice: it is a moral imperative. Since he founded the Free Software Foundation in 1984 with the goal of writing a free UNIX-like operating system, Stallman has been the driving force behind much of the software that goes into Linux (which, he insists, is more accurately called GNU/Linux).
From his offices at MIT, Stallman has masterminded the development of such important software as GNU Emacs, The GNU C Compiler (GCC), and perhaps most importantly, the GNU General Public License.
But nearly 30 years after the glory days of MIT’s AI lab — the fountainhead of hacker culture where Stallman first cut his teeth as a coder — software has come to mean more than simply the code that makes computers run.
The 46 year-old Stallman recently met with Linux Magazine’s editors to -cuss consumer devices, freedom, the U.S. Constitution, and whether or not he’s ever used Microsoft Word.
On hand were Adam Goodman, publisher of Linux Magazine; Matt Welsh, author of O’Reilly’s Running Linux; and Linux Magazine contributing writer Lee Gomes.
Linux Magazine: To the extent that you live someplace, where is it? Is it in Cambridge?
Richard M Stallman: Yes,…
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