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93-694: VTK is distributed under the GNU -approved and FSF -approved BSD 3-clause License . VTK consists of a C++ class library and several interpreted interface layers including Tcl/Tk , Java , and Python . The toolkit is created and supported by the Kitware team. VTK supports a various visualization algorithms including: scalar , vector , tensor , texture, and volumetric methods; and advanced modeling techniques such as: implicit modeling, polygon reduction, mesh smoothing, cutting, contouring, and Delaunay triangulation . VTK has an information visualization framework, has

186-455: A Linux distribution) qualifies as free (libre), and helps distribution developers make their distributions qualify. The list mostly describes distributions that are a combination of GNU packages with a Linux-libre kernel (a modified Linux kernel that removes binary blobs, obfuscated code, and portions of code under proprietary licenses) and consist only of free software (eschewing proprietary software entirely). Distributions that have adopted

279-703: A Unix system so that one could get along without any software that is not free." Development was initiated in January 1984. In 1991, the Linux kernel appeared, developed outside the GNU project by Linus Torvalds , and in December 1992 it was made available under version 2 of the GNU General Public License . Combined with the operating system utilities already developed by the GNU project, it allowed for

372-767: A basis for the GNU Project, as it was portable and "fairly clean". When the GNU project first started they had an Emacs text editor with Lisp for writing editor commands, a source level debugger , a yacc -compatible parser generator, and a linker . The GNU system required its own C compiler and tools to be free software, so these also had to be developed. By June 1987, the project had accumulated and developed free software for an assembler , an almost finished portable optimizing C compiler ( GCC ), an editor ( GNU Emacs ), and various Unix utilities (such as ls , grep , awk , make and ld ). They had an initial kernel that needed more updates. Once

465-408: A big step backward with respect to paper books by being less easy to use, copy, lend to others or sell, also mentioning that Amazon e-books cannot be bought anonymously. His short story " The Right to Read " provides a picture of a dystopian future if the right to share books is impeded. He objects to many of the terms within typical end-user license agreements that accompany e-books. He discourages

558-400: A cell phone due to the lack of phones running entirely on free software. He also avoids using a key card to enter his office building since key card systems track each location and time that someone enters the building using a card. He usually does not browse the web directly from his personal computer. Instead, he uses GNU Womb's grab-url-from-mail utility, an email-based proxy which downloads

651-526: A doctorate in physics for one year, but left the program to focus on his programming at the MIT AI Laboratory . While working (starting in 1975) as a research assistant at MIT under Gerry Sussman , Stallman published a paper (with Sussman) in 1977 on an AI truth maintenance system , called dependency-directed backtracking . The paper was an early work on the problem of intelligent backtracking in constraint satisfaction problems . As of 2009 ,

744-449: A fellow AI Lab hacker, founded Lisp Machines, Inc. (LMI) to market Lisp machines , which he and Tom Knight designed at the lab. Greenblatt rejected outside investment, believing that the proceeds from the construction and sale of a few machines could be profitably reinvested in the growth of the company. In contrast, the other hackers felt that the venture capital -funded approach was better. As no agreement could be reached, hackers from

837-478: A fully free (libre) GNU/Linux distribution. From the mid-1990s onward, with many companies investing in free software development, the Free Software Foundation redirected its funds toward the legal and political support of free software development. Software development from that point on focused on maintaining existing projects, and starting new projects only when there was an acute threat to

930-719: A judge would ask whether it was "really" one program, rather than how the parts were labeled. Therefore, Stallman sent a message back to Jobs which said they believed Jobs' plan was not allowed by the GPL, which resulted in NeXT releasing the Objective-C front end under GPL. For a period of time, Stallman used a notebook from the One Laptop per Child program. Stallman's computer is a refurbished ThinkPad X200 with Libreboot (a free BIOS replacement), and Trisquel GNU/Linux . Before

1023-405: A modified GCC in two parts, one part under GPL and the other part, an Objective-C preprocessor under a proprietary license. Stallman initially thought this would be legal, but since he also thought it would be "very undesirable for free software", he asked a lawyer for advice. The response he got was that judges would consider such schemes to be "subterfuges" and would be very harsh toward them, and

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1116-453: A password control system in 1977, Stallman found a way to decrypt the passwords and sent users messages containing their decoded password, with a suggestion to change it to the empty string (that is, no password) instead, to re-enable anonymous access to the systems. Around 20 percent of the users followed his advice at the time, although passwords ultimately prevailed. Stallman boasted of the success of his campaign for many years afterward. In

1209-406: A result, any user who obtains the software legally has the same freedoms as the rest of its users do. The GNU Project and the Free Software Foundation sometimes differentiate between "strong" and "weak" copyleft. "Weak" copyleft programs typically allow distributors to link them together with non-free programs, while "strong" copyleft strictly forbids this practice. Most of the GNU Project's output

1302-400: A suite of 3D interaction widgets, supports parallel processing, and integrates with various databases and GUI toolkits such as Qt and Tk . VTK is cross-platform and runs on Linux, Windows, Mac and Unix platforms. The core of VTK is implemented as a C++ toolkit, requiring users to build applications by combining various objects into an application. The system also supports automated wrapping of

1395-492: A summer camp, he read manuals for the IBM 7094 . From 1967 to 1969, Stallman attended a Columbia University Saturday program for high school students. He was also a volunteer laboratory assistant in the biology department at Rockefeller University . Although he was interested in mathematics and physics , his supervising professor at Rockefeller thought he showed promise as a biologist. His first experience with actual computers

1488-610: A text editor in APL and a preprocessor for the PL/I programming language on the IBM System/360 . As a first-year student at Harvard University in fall 1970, Stallman was known for his strong performance in Math 55 . He was happy, "For the first time in my life, I felt I had found a home at Harvard." In 1971, near the end of his first year at Harvard, he became a programmer at

1581-404: A user when the person's job was printed, and would message all logged-in users waiting for print jobs if the printer was jammed. Not being able to add these features to the new printer was a major inconvenience, as the printer was on a different floor from most of the users. This experience convinced Stallman of people's need to be able to freely modify the software they use. Richard Greenblatt ,

1674-469: A version of GNU/Hurd that is suitable for production environments since the commencement of the GNU/Hurd project over 33 years ago. A stable version (or variant) of GNU can be run by combining the GNU packages with the Linux kernel , making a functional Unix-like system. The GNU project calls this GNU/Linux, and the defining features are the combination of: Within the GNU website, a list of projects

1767-406: A world of spin-meisters and multimillion-dollar marketing campaigns. In 2018, Stallman instituted "Kind Communication Guidelines" for the GNU project to help its mailing list discussions remain constructive while avoiding explicitly promoting diversity. In October 2019, a public statement signed by 33 maintainers of the GNU project asserted that Stallman's behaviour had "undermined a core value of

1860-672: Is a crime, not the issue of charging for software. Stallman's texinfo is a GPL replacement, loosely based on Scribe; the original version was finished in 1986. In 1980, Stallman and some other hackers at the AI Lab were refused access to the source code for the software of a newly installed laser printer , the Xerox 9700 . Stallman had modified the software for the Lab's previous laser printer (the XGP, Xerographic Printer), so it electronically messaged

1953-557: Is a development model." Thus, he believes that the use of the term will not inform people of the freedom issues, and will not lead to people valuing and defending their freedom. Two alternatives which Stallman does accept are software libre and unfettered software , but free software is the term he asks people to use in English. For similar reasons, he argues for the term proprietary software or non-free software rather than closed-source software , when referring to software that

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2046-401: Is also used in the visualization pipeline of radiological imaging software such as MEDInria or Starviewer which perform multi-volume (also called fusion) and time-dependent (also called phase) visualizations. GNU Project The GNU Project ( / ɡ n uː / ) is a free software , mass collaboration project announced by Richard Stallman on September 27, 1983. Its goal

2139-649: Is an American free software movement activist and programmer . He campaigns for software to be distributed in such a manner that its users have the freedom to use, study, distribute, and modify that software. Software which ensures these freedoms is termed free software . Stallman launched the GNU Project , founded the Free Software Foundation (FSF) in October 1985, developed the GNU Compiler Collection and GNU Emacs , and wrote all versions of

2232-453: Is associated with proponents of strong copyright), or a convenient anonymous micropayment system for people to support authors directly. He indicates that no form of non-commercial sharing of copies should be considered a copyright violation. He has advocated for civil disobedience in a comment on Ley Sinde . He has reportedly refused to autograph anything bearing a '©' symbol, in line with his views. Stallman has helped and supported

2325-522: Is best summed up by the FSF Defective by Design campaign. In the talks, he makes proposals for a "reduced copyright" and suggests a 10-year limit on copyright. He suggests that, instead of restrictions on sharing, authors be supported using a tax, with revenues distributed among them based on cubic roots of their popularity to ensure that "fairly successful non-stars" receive a greater share than they do now (compare with private copying levy which

2418-487: Is laid out and each project has specifics for what type of developer is able to perform the task needed for a certain piece of the GNU project. The skill level ranges from project to project but anyone with background knowledge in programming is encouraged to support the project. The packaging of GNU tools, together with the Linux kernel and other programs, is usually called a Linux distribution (distro). The GNU Project calls

2511-419: Is not free software. Stallman asks that the term GNU/Linux , which he pronounces / ɡ n uː s l æ ʃ ˈ l ɪ n ə k s / GNOO SLASH LIN -əks , be used to refer to the operating system created by combining the GNU system and the kernel Linux. Stallman refers to this operating system as "a variant of GNU, and the GNU Project is its principal developer". He claims that the connection between

2604-550: Is now independently managed by the GNOME Project . GNU Enterprise ( GNUe ) was a meta-project started in 1996, and can be regarded as a sub-project of the GNU Project. GNUe's goal is to create free "enterprise-class data-aware applications" ( enterprise resource planners , etc.). GNUe is designed to collect Enterprise software for the GNU system in a single location (much like the GNOME project collects Desktop software),it

2697-453: Is often incorrectly attributed to him, and Stallman argues that this is a misstatement of his philosophy. He argues that freedom is vital for the sake of users and society as a moral value , and not merely for pragmatic reasons such as possibly developing technically superior software. Eric S. Raymond , one of the creators of the open-source movement , argues that moral arguments, rather than pragmatic ones, alienate potential allies and hurt

2790-490: Is released under a strong copyleft, although some is released under a weak copyleft or a lax, push-over free software license. The first goal of the GNU project was to create a whole free-software operating system. Because UNIX was already widespread and ran on more powerful machines, compared to contemporary CP/M or MS-DOS machines of time, it was decided it would be a Unix-like operating system. Richard Stallman later commented that he considered MS-DOS "a toy". By 1992,

2883-562: Is the same detailed history as at their web site. The GNU Manifesto was written by Richard Stallman to gain support and participation in the GNU Project. In the GNU Manifesto, Stallman listed four freedoms essential to software users: freedom to run a program for any purpose, freedom to study the mechanics of the program and modify it, freedom to redistribute copies, and freedom to improve and change modified versions for public use. To implement these freedoms, users needed full access to

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2976-446: Is to give computer users freedom and control in their use of their computers and computing devices by collaboratively developing and publishing software that gives everyone the rights to freely run the software, copy and distribute it, study it, and modify it. GNU software grants these rights in its license . In order to ensure that the entire software of a computer grants its users all freedom rights (use, share, study, modify), even

3069-604: The GNU General Public License . Stallman launched the GNU Project in September 1983 to write a Unix-like computer operating system composed entirely of free software. With that he also launched the free software movement. He has been the GNU project's lead architect and organizer, and developed a number of pieces of widely used GNU software including among others, the GNU Compiler Collection, GNU Debugger , and GNU Emacs text editor. Stallman pioneered

3162-538: The GNU Manifesto , which outlined his motivation for creating a free operating system called GNU, which would be compatible with Unix . The name GNU is a recursive acronym for "GNU's Not Unix". Soon after, he started a nonprofit corporation called the Free Software Foundation to employ free software programmers and provide a legal infrastructure for the free software movement. Stallman was

3255-597: The International Music Score Library Project get back online, after it had been taken down on October 19, 2007, following a cease and desist letter from Universal Edition . Stallman mentions the dangers some e-books bring compared to paper books, with the example of the Amazon Kindle e-reader that prevents the copying of e-books and allows Amazon to order automatic deletion of a book. He says that such e-books present

3348-584: The Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking scandal. Stallman remained head of the GNU Project, and in 2021 returned to the FSF board of directors and others. Stallman was born March 16, 1953 in New York City , to a family of Jewish heritage. He had a troublesome relationship with his parents and did not feel he had a proper home. He was interested in computers at a young age; when he was a pre-teen at

3441-674: The Lisp machine operating system (the CONS of 1974–1976 and the CADR of 1977–1979—this latter unit was commercialized by Symbolics and Lisp Machines , Inc. (LMI) starting around 1980). He became an ardent critic of restricted computer access in the lab, which at that time was funded primarily by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency ( DARPA ). When MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) installed

3534-605: The MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory , and became a regular in the hacker community, where he was usually known by his initials, RMS , which he used in his computer accounts. Stallman received a bachelor's degree in physics ( magna cum laude ) from Harvard in 1974. He considered staying on at Harvard, but instead decided to enroll as a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He pursued

3627-404: The free software community . One of the most notable projects of the GNU Project is the GNU Compiler Collection , whose components have been adopted as the standard compiler system on many Unix-like systems. The copyright of most works by the GNU Project is owned by the Free Software Foundation. The GNOME desktop effort was launched by the GNU Project because another desktop system, KDE ,

3720-458: The kernel and the compiler were finished, GNU was able to be used for program development . The main goal was to create many other applications to be like the Unix system. GNU was able to run Unix programs but was not identical to it. GNU incorporated longer file names, file version numbers, and a crash-proof file system. The GNU Manifesto was written to gain support and participation from others for

3813-415: The source code . To ensure code remained free and provide it to the public, Stallman created the GNU General Public License (GPL), which allowed software and the future generations of code derived from it to remain free for public use. Although most of the GNU Project's output is technical in nature, it was launched as a social, ethical, and political initiative. As well as producing software and licenses,

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3906-478: The C++ core into Python, Java and Tcl, so that VTK applications may also be written using these programming languages. VTK was initially created in 1993 as companion software to the book The Visualization Toolkit: An Object-Oriented Approach to 3D Graphics . The book and software were written by three researchers (Will Schroeder, Ken Martin and Bill Lorensen) on their own time and with permission from General Electric (thus

3999-434: The FSF call it GNU/Linux . This has been a longstanding naming controversy in the free software community. Stallman argues that not using GNU in the name of the operating system unfairly disparages the value of the GNU project and harms the sustainability of the free software movement by breaking the link between the software and the free software philosophy of the GNU project. Stallman's influences on hacker culture include

4092-510: The GNU FSDG include Dragora GNU/Linux-Libre , GNU Guix System , Hyperbola GNU/Linux-libre , Parabola GNU/Linux-libre , Trisquel GNU/Linux , PureOS , and a few others. The Fedora Project's distribution license guidelines were used as a basis for the FSDG. The Fedora Project's own guidelines, however, currently do not follow the FSDG, and thus the GNU Project does not consider Fedora to be

4185-423: The GNU Project has published a number of writings, the majority of which were authored by Richard Stallman. The GNU project uses software that is free for users to copy, edit, and distribute. It is free in the sense that users can change the software to fit individual needs. The way programmers obtain the free software depends on where they get it. The software could be provided to the programmer from friends or over

4278-456: The GNU project had completed all of the major operating system utilities, but had not completed their proposed operating system kernel , GNU Hurd . With the release of the Linux kernel , started independently by Linus Torvalds in 1991, and released under the GPLv2 with version 0.12 in 1992, for the first time it was possible to run an operating system composed completely of free software. Though

4371-438: The GNU project's philosophy and its software is broken when people refer to the combination as merely Linux. Starting around 2003, he began also using the term GNU+Linux , which he pronounces / ɡ n uː p l ʌ s ˈ l ɪ n ə k s / GNOO PLUS LIN -əks , to prevent others from pronouncing the phrase GNU/Linux as / ɡ n uː ˈ l ɪ n ə k s / GNOO LIN -əks , which would erroneously imply that

4464-469: The GNU project: the empowerment of all computer users" and called for "GNU maintainers to collectively decide about the organization of the project". The statement was published soon after Stallman resigned as president of the FSF and left his "visiting scientist" role at MIT in September 2019. In spite of that, Stallman remained head of the GNU project. Stallman has written many essays on software freedom, and has been an outspoken political campaigner for

4557-407: The GNU system had been completed. Stallman was responsible for contributing many necessary tools, including a text editor ( GNU Emacs ), compiler ( GCC ), debugger ( GNU Debugger ), and a build automator ( GNU make ). The notable omission was a kernel . In 1990, members of the GNU project began using Carnegie Mellon's Mach microkernel in a project called GNU Hurd , which has yet to achieve

4650-460: The Internet, or the company a programmer works for may purchase the software. Proceeds from associate members, purchases, and donations support the GNU Project. Copyleft is what helps maintain free use of this software among other programmers. Copyleft gives the legal right to everyone to use, edit, and redistribute programs or programs' code as long as the distribution terms do not change. As

4743-507: The Linux kernel is not part of the GNU project, it was developed using GCC and other GNU programming tools and was released as free software under the GNU General Public License . Most compilation of the Linux kernel is still done with GNU toolchains, but it is currently possible to use the Clang compiler and the LLVM toolchain for compilation. As of present, the GNU project has not released

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4836-699: The ThinkPad X200, Stallman used a Thinkpad T400s with Libreboot and Trisquel GNU/Linux. And before the T400s, Stallman used a ThinkPad X60, and even further back in time, a Lemote Yeeloong netbook (using the same company's Loongson processor) which he chose because, like the X200, X60 and the T400s, it could run with free software at the BIOS level, stating "freedom is my priority. I've campaigned for freedom since 1983, and I am not going to surrender that freedom for

4929-490: The United States government may encourage the use of software as a service because this would allow them to access users' data without needing a search warrant . He denies being an anarchist despite his wariness of some legislation and the fact that he has "advocated strongly for user privacy and his own view of software freedom". Stallman places great importance on the words and labels people use to talk about

5022-456: The combination of GNU and the Linux kernel "GNU/Linux", and asks others to do the same, resulting in the GNU/Linux naming controversy . Most Linux distros combine GNU packages with a Linux kernel which contains proprietary binary blobs . The GNU Free System Distribution Guidelines (GNU FSDG) is a system distribution commitment that explains how an installable system distribution (such as

5115-738: The concept of copyleft , which uses the principles of copyright law to preserve the right to use, modify, and distribute free software. He is the main author of free software licenses which describe those terms, most notably the GNU General Public License (GPL), the most widely used free software license. In 1989, he co-founded the League for Programming Freedom . Since the mid-1990s, Stallman has spent most of his time advocating for free software, as well as campaigning against software patents , digital rights management (which he refers to as digital restrictions management, calling

5208-502: The development of VTK and even developed a number of VTK modules themselves. VTK forms the core of the 3DSlicer biomedical computing application, and numerous research papers at IEEE Visualization and other conferences based on VTK have appeared. VTK has been used on a large 1024-processor computer at the Los Alamos National Laboratory to process nearly a Petabyte of data. Later VTK was expanded to support

5301-562: The end goal of removing code secrecy. In February 1984, Stallman quit his job at MIT to work full-time on the GNU project, which he had announced in September 1983. Since then, he had remained affiliated with MIT as an unpaid "visiting scientist" in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory . Until "around 1998", he maintained an office at the Institute that doubled as his legal residence. Stallman announced

5394-434: The first operating system that was free software, commonly known as Linux . The project's current work includes software development, awareness building, political campaigning, and sharing of new material. Richard Stallman announced his intent to start coding the GNU Project in a Usenet message in September 1983. Despite never having used Unix prior, Stallman felt that it was the most appropriate system design to use as

5487-536: The free software movement since the early 1990s. The speeches he has regularly given are titled The GNU Project and the Free Software Movement , The Dangers of Software Patents , and Copyright and Community in the Age of Computer Networks . In 2006 and 2007, during the eighteen month public consultation for the drafting of version 3 of the GNU General Public License, he added a fourth topic explaining

5580-572: The government of the Indian State of Kerala , he persuaded officials to discard proprietary software, such as Microsoft's, at state-run schools. This has resulted in a landmark decision to switch all school computers in 12,500 high schools from Windows to a free software operating system. After personal meetings, Stallman obtained positive statements about the free software movement from the then-president of India, A. P. J. Abdul Kalam , French 2007 presidential candidate Ségolène Royal , and

5673-415: The importance of terminology, are a source of regular misunderstanding and friction with parts of the free software and open-source communities . After initially accepting the concept, Stallman rejects a common alternative term , open-source software , because it does not call to mind what Stallman sees as the value of the software: freedom . He wrote, "Free software is a political movement; open source

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5766-420: The inaccurate wording. Minsky was not accused of "assault", and from the victims' testimonies it was not clear whether Minsky had committed "assault", and Stallman argued that "the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing. Assuming she was being coerced by Epstein, he would have had every reason to conceal that from most of his associates". When challenged by other members of

5859-694: The ingestion, processing and display of informatics data. This work was supported by Sandia National Laboratories under the 'Titan' project. In 2013, a survey paper on visualization for radiotherapy noticed that while VTK is a powerful and widely known toolkit, it lacked a number of important features, such as multivolume rendering, had no support of proprietary CUDA from NVidia , no support of out-of-core rendering and no native support for visualization of time-dependent volumetric data. However, since 2013 there have been improvements such as VTK-m which can speed-up and parallelize certain computationally intensive tasks using libraries like Sandia 's Kokkos . VTK

5952-521: The kernel Linux is maintained by the GNU project. The creator of Linux, Linus Torvalds , has publicly said that he objects to modification of the name and that the rename "is their [the FSF ] confusion not ours". Stallman professes admiration for Julian Assange and Edward Snowden . He has spoken against government and corporate surveillance on many occasions. He refers to mobile phones as "portable surveillance and tracking devices ", refusing to own

6045-593: The lab's community. For two years, from 1982 to the end of 1983, Stallman worked by himself to clone the output of the Symbolics programmers, with the aim of preventing them from gaining a monopoly on the lab's computers. Stallman argues that software users should have the freedom to share with their neighbors and be able to study and make changes to the software that they use. He maintains that attempts by proprietary software vendors to prohibit these acts are antisocial and unethical. The phrase "software wants to be free"

6138-421: The late 1970s and early 1980s, the hacker culture which Stallman thrived on began to fragment. To prevent software from being used on their competitors' computers, most manufacturers stopped distributing source code and began using copyright and restrictive software licenses to limit or prohibit copying and redistribution. Such proprietary software had existed before, and it became apparent that it would become

6231-403: The latter camp founded Symbolics , with the aid of Russ Noftsker , an AI Lab administrator. Symbolics recruited most of the remaining hackers including notable hacker Bill Gosper , who then left the AI Lab. Symbolics also forced Greenblatt to resign by citing MIT policies. While both companies delivered proprietary software, Stallman believed that LMI, unlike Symbolics, had tried to avoid hurting

6324-402: The maturity level required for full POSIX compliance. In 1991, Linus Torvalds , a Finnish student, used the GNU's development tools to produce the free monolithic Linux kernel . The existing programs from the GNU project were readily ported to run on the resultant platform. Most sources use the name Linux to refer to the general-purpose operating system thus formed, while Stallman and

6417-673: The means of inviting the public to contribute articles. The resulting GNUPedia was eventually retired in favour of the emerging Misplaced Pages , which had similar aims and was enjoying greater success. Stallman was on the Advisory Council of Latin American television station teleSUR from its launch but resigned in February 2011, criticizing pro-Gaddafi propaganda during the Arab Spring . In August 2006, at his meetings with

6510-467: The more common term misleading), and other legal and technical systems which he sees as taking away users' freedoms. That includes software license agreements , non-disclosure agreements , activation keys , dongles , copy restriction , proprietary formats , and binary executables without source code . In September 2019, Stallman resigned as president of the FSF and left his visiting scientist role at MIT after making controversial comments about

6603-475: The most fundamental and important part, the operating system (including all its numerous utility programs) needed to be free software. Stallman decided to call this operating system GNU (a recursive acronym meaning " GNU's not Unix! "), basing its design on that of Unix , a proprietary operating system. According to its manifesto, the founding goal of the project was to build a free operating system, and if possible, "everything useful that normally comes with

6696-588: The name POSIX and the Emacs editor. On Unix systems, GNU Emacs's popularity rivaled that of another editor vi , spawning an editor war . Stallman's take on this was to canonize himself as St. IGNUcius of the Church of Emacs and acknowledge that "vi vi vi is the editor of the beast ", while "using a free version of vi is not a sin ; it is a penance ". In 1992, developers at Lucid Inc. doing their own work on Emacs clashed with Stallman and ultimately forked

6789-575: The nonsalaried president of the FSF, which is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded in Massachusetts . Stallman popularized the concept of copyleft , a legal mechanism to protect the modification and redistribution rights for free software. It was first implemented in the GNU Emacs General Public License, and in 1989 the first program-independent GNU General Public License (GPL) was released. By then, much of

6882-548: The norm. This shift in the legal characteristics of software was a consequence triggered by the US Copyright Act of 1976 . When Brian Reid in 1979 placed time bombs in the Scribe markup language and word processing system to restrict unlicensed access to the software, Stallman proclaimed it "a crime against humanity". During an interview in 2008, he clarified that it is blocking the user's freedom that he believes

6975-577: The ownership of the software resided with, and continues to reside with, the authors). After the core of VTK was written, users and developers around the world began to improve and apply the system to real-world problems. With the founding of Kitware , the VTK community grew rapidly, and toolkit usage expanded into academic, research and commercial applications. A number of major companies and organizations, such as Sandia National Laboratories , Livermore National Laboratory , Los Alamos National Laboratory funded

7068-487: The plan for the GNU operating system in September 1983 on several ARPANET mailing lists and USENET . He started the project on his own and describes: "As an operating system developer, I had the right skills for this job. So even though I could not take success for granted, I realized that I was elected to do the job. I chose to make the system compatible with Unix so that it would be portable, and so that Unix users could easily switch to it." In 1985, Stallman published

7161-418: The police being called. AMD has since acquired ATI and has taken steps to make their hardware documentation available for use by the free software community. Stallman has characterized Steve Jobs as having a "malign influence" on computing because of Jobs' leadership in guiding Apple to produce closed platforms . According to Stallman, while Jobs was at NeXT , Jobs asked Stallman if he could distribute

7254-451: The president of Ecuador Rafael Correa . Stallman has participated in protests about software patents, digital rights management , and proprietary software . Protesting against proprietary software in April 2006, Stallman held a "Don't buy from ATI , enemy of your freedom" placard at an invited talk given by an ATI compiler architect in the building where Stallman worked, resulting in

7347-491: The project. Programmers were encouraged to take part in any aspect of the project that interested them. People could donate funds, computer parts, or even their own time to write code and programs for the project. The origins and development of most aspects of the GNU Project (and free software in general) are shared in a detailed narrative in the Emacs help system. (C-h g runs the Emacs editor command describe-gnu-project .) It

7440-495: The proposed changes. Stallman's staunch advocacy for free software inspired the creation of the Virtual Richard M. Stallman ( vrms ), software that analyzes the packages currently installed on a Debian GNU/Linux system, and reports those that are from the non-free tree. Stallman disagrees with parts of Debian's definition of free software. In 1999, Stallman called for development of a free online encyclopedia through

7533-465: The sake of a more convenient computer." Stallman's Lemote was stolen from him in 2012 while he was in Argentina. Before Trisquel, Stallman has used the gNewSense operating system. Stallman has regularly given a talk entitled "Copyright vs. Community" where he reviews the state of digital rights management (DRM) and names many of the products and corporations which he boycotts. His approach to DRM

7626-495: The software into what would become XEmacs . The technology journalist Andrew Leonard has characterized what he sees as Stallman's uncompromising stubbornness as common among elite computer programmers: There's something comforting about Stallman's intransigence. Win or lose, Stallman will never give up. He'll be the stubbornest mule on the farm until the day he dies. Call it fixity of purpose, or just plain cussedness, his single-minded commitment and brutal honesty are refreshing in

7719-556: The technique Stallman and Sussman introduced is still the most general and powerful form of intelligent backtracking. The technique of constraint recording , wherein partial results of a search are recorded for later reuse, was also introduced in this paper. As a hacker in MIT's AI laboratory, Stallman worked on software projects like TECO and Emacs for the Incompatible Timesharing System (ITS), as well as

7812-570: The term intellectual property is designed to confuse people, and is used to prevent intelligent discussion on the specifics of copyright , patent , trademark , and other areas of law by lumping together things that are more dissimilar than similar. He also argues that by referring to these laws as property laws, the term biases the discussion when thinking about how to treat these issues, writing: These laws originated separately, evolved differently, cover different activities, have different rules, and raise different public policy issues. Copyright law

7905-536: The use of several storage technologies such as DVD or Blu-ray video discs because the content of such media is encrypted. He considers manufacturers' use of encryption on non-secret data ( to force the user to view certain promotional material ) as a conspiracy. Stallman recognized the Sony BMG copy protection rootkit scandal to be a criminal act by Sony and supports a general boycott of Sony for its legal actions against George Hotz . Stallman has suggested that

7998-439: The webpage content and then emails it to the user. More recently, he said that he accesses all websites via Tor , except for Misplaced Pages (which generally disallows editing from Tor unless users have an IP block exemption ). In September 2019, it was learned that Jeffrey Epstein had made donations to MIT, and in the wake of this, MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito resigned. An internal MIT CSAIL listserv mailing list thread

8091-401: The world, including the relationship between software and freedom. He asks people to say free software and GNU/Linux , and to avoid the terms intellectual property and piracy (in relation to copying not approved by the publisher). One of his criteria for giving an interview to a journalist is that the journalist agrees to use his terminology throughout the article. Stallman argues that

8184-423: Was GNOME, which tackled the same issue from a different angle. It aimed to make a replacement for KDE that had no dependencies on proprietary software. The Harmony project did not make much progress, but GNOME developed very well. Eventually, the proprietary component that KDE depended on ( Qt ) was released as free software. GNOME has since dissociated itself from the GNU Project and the Free Software Foundation, and

8277-538: Was at the IBM New York Scientific Center when he was in high school. He was hired for the summer in 1970 after his senior year of high school, to write a numerical analysis program in Fortran . He completed the task after a couple of weeks ("I swore that I would never use FORTRAN again because I despised it as a language compared with other languages") and spent the rest of the summer writing

8370-519: Was becoming popular but required users to install Qt , which was then proprietary software . To prevent people from being tempted to install KDE and Qt, the GNU Project simultaneously launched two projects. One was the Harmony toolkit . This was an attempt to make a free software replacement for Qt. Had this project been successful, the perceived problem with the KDE would have been solved. The second project

8463-490: Was designed to promote authorship and art, and covers the details of a work of authorship or art. Patent law was intended to encourage publication of ideas, at the price of finite monopolies over these ideas–a price that may be worth paying in some fields and not in others. Trademark law was not intended to promote any business activity, but simply to enable buyers to know what they are buying. His requests that people use certain terms, and his ongoing efforts to convince people of

8556-536: Was later Decommissioned . In 2001, the GNU Project received the USENIX Lifetime Achievement Award for "the ubiquity, breadth, and quality of its freely available redistributable and modifiable software, which has enabled a generation of research and commercial development". Richard Stallman Richard Matthew Stallman ( / ˈ s t ɔː l m ən / STAWL -mən ; born March 16, 1953), also known by his initials, rms ,

8649-569: Was started to protest the coverup of MIT's connections to Epstein. In the thread, discussion had turned to deceased MIT professor Marvin Minsky , who was named by Virginia Giuffre as one of the people that Epstein had forced her to have sex with. Giuffre, a minor at the time, had been caught in Epstein's underage sex trafficking ring. In response to a comment saying that Minsky "is accused of assaulting one of Epstein's victims", Stallman objected to

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