RICHARD STALLMAN

RICHARD STALLMAN

FOUNDER, GNU PROJECT AND FREE SOFTWARE FOUNDATION

An alumnus of the Harvard University, Richard Stallman showed signs of expertise in the field of computer programming at a very early stage. IBM New York Scientific Centre hired him to write a numerical analysis program in FORTRAN while he was only in high school. As a hacker in MIT's AI laboratory, Stallman worked on various software projects like TECO, Emacs and the Lisp Machine Operating System.

In 1984, Richard Stallman launched the development of the GNU operating system (see www.gnu.org) and set up the Free Software Foundation (FSF) in 1985. GNU is free software: everyone has the freedom to copy it and redistribute it, as well as to make changes either large or small. The GNU/Linux system, basically the GNU operating system with Linux added, is used on tens of millions of computers today. GNU project that was started with an aim of creating a whole free-software operating system achieved its goal in 1992 when the GNU system was launched with Linux as its kernel. FSF, with its ideology to promote the universal freedom to create, distribute and modify computer software supports free software movement and the concept of copyleft. Richard Stallman also pioneered the development of GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), GNU Debugger and Emacs.

GNU Project is currently working on software development, awareness building, and political campaigning. Presently, he is the president of FSF and an enthusiastic political campaigner for the free software movement. He has also co-founded the League for Programming Freedom in 1989. Stallman has received the ACM Grace Hopper Award, a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Pioneer award, and the Takeda Award for Social/Economic Betterment, as well as several honorary doctorates.