Thirty years ago, when Richard Stallman launched the GNU project, and during the three decades that followed, his sometimes extreme views and peculiar antics were ridiculed and disregarded as paranoia - but here we are, 2012, and his once paranoid what-ifs have become reality.

In this video Richard Stallman talks about surveillance and being controlled on the Internet.

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 is currently touring Australia. On September 16 he spoke to Greg Adamson in Melbourne.

Michael Tiemann, who contributed as much as anyone to the later development of GCC, and who had dreamed of writing the perfect compiler, said that the day of GCC's release was "the most thrilling and most terrifying day of my life (up to that point)."

The freedom of the software we all sometimes use is under attack, in part thanks to companies like ACCESS and Microsoft, which found a partner in Tim O’Reilly and others who take money to change the direction of Open Source (taking it further away from Free/libre software)

RMS: You shouldn't write software to use .NET. No exceptions.
The basic point is that Microsoft has patents over features in .NET, and its patent promise regarding free software implementations of those is inadequate. It may someday attack the free implementations of these features.