"NEW DELHI: Imagine a world free of patents and passwords, of copyrights and copycats, of freedom to create. Imagine a world full of free software. That’s the world of Richard Stallman , tech guru, hacker, political activist, pioneer of concepts like Copyleft, digital colonisation and maker of GNU compiler and debugger of GNU/Linux operating system.

As founder president of Free Software Foundation, Dr Stallman, 55, has managed to convince governments like Kerala and companies like ATI (now AMD) to switch to the idea of free software. ET caught up with the legendary Richard Matthew Stallman (called RMS by hackers) on his visit to India to understand his idea of a free world of technology. Excerpts..."

"...The Free Software Foundation Europe, and the Royal Institute of Technology organized a lecture with Dr. Richard Stallman. Mainly the session was about the free software movement and the GNU/Linux operating system. Richard Stallman spoke about the goals and philosophy of the Free Software Movement, and the status and history of the GNU operating system, which in combination with the kernel Linux is now used by tens of millions of users world-wide..."

The Free Software Foundation (FSF) has just released in tandem the second edition of its president and founder Richard Stallman's selected essays, Free Software, Free Society, and his semi-autobiography, Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman and the Free Software Revolution.

Richard M. Stallman is an American software freedom activist and computer programmer. In September 1983, he launched the GNU Project to create a free Unix-like operating system; he initiated the Free Software Movement; in October 1985 he founded the Free Software Foundation.

"In February of last year, Richard M. Stallman, founder and president of the Free Software Foundation, spoke at the International Conference on Communication and Technologies in Havana about what he strongly believes are the merits of non-proprietary software. I recently learned directly from Stallman what that experience was like.

"EFF-Austin invites you to a talk by the Free Software Foundation Activist - Richard Stallman on 23rd April 2009 [...] The GNU General Public License (GPL) was the outcome of the need for a principal right to free software. What does the freedom mean, what are the foundations of the GNU GPL philosophy and how has it evolved since Richard Stallman wrote the first GNU GPL in 1989?

"I have just returned from the BCS Manchester event on The Free Software Movement in Ethics and Practice presented by Richard Stallman, the founder and president of the Free Software Foundation. Richard, speaking for over 2 hours without notes or any visual aids, captivated the audience of over 250 with his passion about establishing a world in which user's freedom is respected..."

"Surveillance, censorship, restrictive data formats and software-as-a-service threatened the freedom of IT users, GNU founder and free software activist Richard Stallman claimed..."

"We are holding our first public presentation and Richard Stallman will be our guest! [..] The Founder of the Free Software Foundation, Richard Stallman, is stopping in Ottawa for meetings with government and non-governmental officials. He is enroute back to MIT after receiving an honorary degree from Lakehead University, Thunder Bay.