In 1983, a computer programmer from MIT by the name of Richard M. Stallman grew skeptical of the commercial software packages that were selling for big bucks at computer stores... Stallman believed that people who use computers and software are entitled to four essential freedoms, described as follows.

Richard Mathew Stallman or “RMS”, his famous initials of the hacker community at Harvard where he graduated magna cum laude in Physics in 1974, is the most prominent American Free Software Advocate alive today.

Back in the 1980s, when Richard Stallman was the only one talking about the need for "free software," no one quite knew what he was talking about. That's not just because people looked askance at someone who said it would be possible to write a version of Unix that could be given away for free, along with all of the compilers, editors, and utilities that a typical Unix installation included.

"...Richard Stallman is internationally recognized as a leader in the free software movement, which argues that everyone should be free to run, share, study, and modify software..."

[1st May, 2008 , Manchester] - "Richard Stallman will speak about the Free Software Movement, which campaigns for freedom so that computer users can cooperate to control their own computing activities. The Free Software Movement developed the GNU operating system, often erroneously referred to as Linux, specifically to establish these freedoms..."

"Richard Stallman will speak about the Free Software Movement, which campaigns for freedom so that computer users can cooperate to control their own computing activities. The Free Software Movement developed the GNU operating system, often erroneously referred to as Linux, specifically to establish these freedoms."

"When Richard Stallman announced the GNU Project back in 1983, he launched a movement that would, in time, transform the software industry. The Free Software Foundation, also created by Stallman and now sponsor of the GNU Project, has become a driving force behind the adoption of the widely used GNU GPL software license.

We discussed some of the more recent developments with Richard Stallman, whose passion for freedom in computing remains intense. The following Q & A explores the goals of free software, progress that has been made, and ways to maintain or instill freedom in software that we use..."

"The intersection of ethics, law, business and computer software is the subject of these essays and speeches by MacArthur Foundation Grant winner, Richard M. Stallman.

"Richard Stallman was reading computer books before he'd ever seen a computer. When the Sixties Revolution was running out of steam, he was liberating MIT computers from behind locked doors and helping set off the next great Boomer movement. Though he disdained hippies and radicals in his youth, today, as the leader of the Free Software Movement, he's a long-haired rebel coder-writer with a cause, and an idealistic thorn in the side of the cyber world's killer-app capitalists..."