Thanks to Canonical and its success with popularizing Ubuntu Linux, there has been an astonishing influx of new Linux users. This is one of those good news -- bad news scenarios; the growth is wonderful, but it also brings a growth in user demands, and a carryover of bad habits from the closed, proprietary software world.

"...The first thing we see is that the organization ducks the issue of users' freedom; it uses the term "open source" and does not speak of "free software". These two terms stand for different philosophies which are based on different values: free software's values are freedom and social solidarity, whereas open source cites only practical convenience values such as powerful, reliable software..."

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.

[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..."

"If you think computers and the internet have done a power of good for individual freedom, you've clearly not been exposed to the thinking of Richard Stallman.

Stallman, an American, is part-way through a speaking tour on which he is outlining the philosophy of the Free Software Foundation, of which he is founder and president.

"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..."

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.

Richard Stallman raised more than a few eyebrows when he signed the letter objecting to the MySQL purchase. Endorsing, or seeming to endorse, the practice of selling proprietary exceptions to GPL'ed software seemed entirely out of character with Stallman's comments on Free Software up to that point.

"...The leading software project in the open source radio world is called GNU Radio. GNU refers to a software movement started in the 70s by a proto-hippie-geek by the name of Richard Stallman. Stallman was the first software developer to publicly espouse the "free love" approach to software copyrights that lead to such modern marvels as Linux.