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Richard Stallman
Richard Stallman · Patafisik, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
Person

Richard Stallman

b. 1953

American software freedom activist, short story writer and computer programmer, founder of the GNU project

Born
16 Mar 1953 · Manhattan
Part ofUnited States1585 – todayJews74 BCE – today

Life timeline

Their life from birth to death. On the timeline, world events of the time are shown faintly.

Showing 84 years
  1. 16 Mar 1953BornBorn in Manhattan
  2. 1984RoleChief GNUisance
  3. 1985 – 2019RolePresident
  4. 1990AwardGrace Murray Hopper Award
  5. 1990AwardMacArthur Fellows Program
  6. 1996AwardHonorary doctor of Royal Institute of Technology
  7. 1998AwardEFF Award
  8. 1999AwardYuri Rubinsky Memorial Award
  9. 2001AwardHonorary doctorate of the University of Glasgow
  10. 2001AwardTakeda Awards
  11. 2003AwardHonorary doctorate of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel
  12. 2013AwardInternet Hall of Fame
  13. 2015AwardACM Software System Award
  14. 2016AwardDoctor honoris causa from the Pierre and Marie Curie University

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Meanwhile in the world

Major world events during their lifetime (1953 – today).

  1. 1953 – 1959Cuban Revolution
  2. 19541954 FIFA World Cup
  3. 1955 – 1975Vietnam War
  4. 1956Hungarian Revolution of 1956
  5. 1956Suez Crisis
  6. 19581958 FIFA World Cup
  7. 1959Antarctic Treaty System
  8. 19621962 FIFA World Cup
  9. 1962Cuban Missile Crisis
  10. 19661966 FIFA World Cup
  11. 1966 – 1976Cultural Revolution
  12. 1968Prague Spring
  13. 1969Apollo 11 Moon landing
  14. 19721972 Summer Olympics
  15. 19741974 FIFA World Cup
  16. 19781978 FIFA World Cup
  17. 1978 – 1979Iranian Revolution
  18. 1979 – 1989Soviet–Afghan War
  19. 1980 – 1988Iran–Iraq War
  20. 19841984 Summer Olympics
  21. 1985Schengen Agreement
  22. 19891989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre
  23. 1989Fall of the Berlin Wall
  24. 19901990 FIFA World Cup
  25. 1991Dissolution of the Soviet Union
  26. 19941994 FIFA World Cup
  27. 1994 – 1996First Chechen War
  28. 19981998 FIFA World Cup
  29. 2001 – 2021War in Afghanistan
  30. 2003 – 2011Iraq War
  31. 20042004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami
  32. 20062006 FIFA World Cup
  33. 20082008 Summer Olympics
  34. 2008Russo-Georgian War
  35. 20102010 Haiti earthquake
  36. 2010 – 2012Arab Spring
  37. 20112011 Norway attacks
  38. 2011Libyan civil war
  39. 2011 – 2024Syrian civil war
  40. 20122012 Summer Olympics

Biography

Richard Matthew Stallman ( STAWL-mən; born March 16, 1953), also known by his initials rms, is an American free software activist and programmer. He campaigns for software to be distributed in such a manner that its users have the freedom to use, study, distribute, and modify that software. Software which ensures these freedoms is termed free software. Stallman launched the GNU Project, founded the Free Software Foundation (FSF) in October 1985, developed the GNU C Compiler and GNU Emacs, and wrote all versions of the GNU General Public License.

Stallman launched the GNU Project in September 1983 to write a Unix-like computer operating system composed entirely of free software. With that he also launched the free software movement. He has been GNU Project's lead architect and organizer, and developed a number of pieces of widely used GNU software including among others, the GNU Compiler Collection, GNU Debugger, and GNU Emacs.

Stallman pioneered the concept of copyleft, which uses the principles of copyright law to preserve the right to use, modify, and distribute free software. He is the main author of free software licenses which describe those terms, most notably the GNU General Public License (GPL), the most widely used free software license.

In 1989, he co-founded the League for Programming Freedom. Since the mid-1990s, Stallman has spent most of his time advocating for free software, as well as campaigning against software patents, digital rights management (which he refers to as digital restrictions management), software license agreements, non-disclosure agreements, activation keys, software protection dongles, copy restriction, proprietary formats, and closed-source binary executables.

In September 2019, Stallman resigned as president of the FSF and left his visiting scientist role at MIT after making controversial comments about the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking scandal related to Marvin Minsky. He remained head of the GNU Project, and in 2021 returned to the FSF board of directors and others.

Text from the Wikipedia article Richard Stallman, CC BY-SA 4.0

About this information

Dates and life events come from this person’s Wikidata entry.

We only show events that the sources give a date for. Anything without a date is left out rather than guessed.