The photo comes from wikimedia.org
"Richard_Stallman_at_LibrePlanet_2019" by Ruben Rodriguez
The photo comes from
wikimedia.org
"Richard_Stallman_at_LibrePlanet_2019" by Ruben Rodriguez
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This is the personal web site of Richard Stallman.
The views expressed here are my personal views, not those of
the Free Software Foundation or
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For the sake of separation, this site has always been
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I am thinking of making another trip to Europe during February - April. If you would like to invite me to speak during that trip, please write to me at rms-invitation@gnu.org with "feb-apr" as the subject.
If you want to send me GPG-encrypted mail, do not trust key servers! Some of them have phony keys under my name and email address, made by someone else as a trick. See gpg.html for my real key.
Richard Stallman has cancer. Fortunately it is slow-growing and manageable follicular lymphoma. Treatment put it into remission, and he can expect to live many more years. However, he now has to be even more careful not to catch Covid-19.
The largest part of the site is the political notes, and they are typically updated every day.
I'm looking for people to
US citizens: call on federal agencies to protect endangered wildlife, not business interests.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: phone our congresscritter and say to impeach Hegseth.
The main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121. If you message Congress, please spread the word!
US citizens: call for protecting the CFPB from being made to show humility" towards the banks it is supposed to regulate.
The main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121. If you message Congress, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to restore PBS and NPR funding.
The main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121. If you message Congress, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on congressional Democrats to reject any new abortion restrictions in ACA funding talks.
The main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121. If you message Congress, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on legislators to protect safe abortion access: no one should die because doctors are afraid they will be imprisoned if they save her.
The main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121. If you message Congress, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the Senate to protect workers' rights by rejecting the nomination of Scott Mayer, union-busting lawyer, to the NLRB
The main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121. If you message Congress, please spread the word!
I'm looking for a cartoonist who would like to draw cartoons for me once in a while. If you're interested, please write to rms, which refers to me, at the location gnu period org.
Boycott Chevron, in the name of Steven Donziger.
* Abandoned coalmines and oil and gas wells are now one of the biggest sources of the powerful greenhouse gas methane, new data shows, and little effort is being made to clean them up.*
I expect that the fossil fuel companies to divest themselves from old mines and wells in ways that will avoid liability for them — just as they sometimes disconnect themselves from responsibility for supporting former workers.
So I suggest making it a felony to implement a restructuring of business or assets in a way that is likely to result predictably in strand assets that carry financial responsibilities with no one capable of shouldering the responsibilities.
A pitifully weak attempt to solve a real problem: asking for a federal law that would permit victims of domestic abuse and stalking to demand that data brokers delete information about them.
Data, once collected, will be abused. The way to prevent that abuse is to facilitate refusing to hand it over in the first place.
Here is my proposal for protecting the specific people known to be in particular danger, and everyone else who could be harmed if individuals, businesses or governments use their personal data against them without a search warrant: require services to be available anonymously.
The selfish interest of those who keep trade secrets is rational but antisocial. In many cases the only harm it does is to hold back the general advance of technology. But sometimes it does really nasty things. For digital hardware and software, it often gives companies a way to subjugate their users. Regarding use of toxic chemicals, it endangers public health.
Why would legislators pass laws to "protect" companies instead of protecting the people they harm? I suspect it is partly because these companies are influential and the legislators seek their support, and partly because the legislators ask them for campaign funds.
But it is also partly the result of the mindset of "trickle down", which assumes that the only way to get more funds for the state is to let increase the size of the economy by letting companies have what they want. Unfortunately, what they want is often to be allowed to harm the public.
Most Democrats in Congress got corrupted this way in the 80s and 90s. (The exceptions are the progressive Democrats.) Now in the UK Starmer is guiding Labour into that sort of corruption.
Clearly our laws should say that any public need to know about the presence of toxic substances in a business facility overrides the desire to keep them secret.
Whether the owners are Chinese is a question that there is no need to ask, because the state should never give money to a business "to support it." Instead it should offer to lend money to the company for suitable repayment, or else buy equity at a fair price.
These two ways of supporting a company avoid giving the owners an opporunity to rip off the state -- which the company's owners are likely to try to do, if they can, regardless of which country they are from.
With a policy like this, it wouldn't matter which country the company's owners are from.
Here are some quotations that I particularly like.
You can now read the political notes on Mastodon.
US citizens: call on federal agencies to protect endangered wildlife, not business interests.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: phone our congresscritter and say to impeach Hegseth.
The main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121. If you message Congress, please spread the word!
Chatbot slop that contains a lot of supposed information can persuade people, but that supposed information tends often to be false.
(satire) *Utah Bans Eye Contact During Sex.*
Some US schools buy supplies from Amazon, and get screwed by changing prices.
States ought to prohibit public agencies and institutions (such as public schools) from buying from any company that requires sellers to commit not to charge less though other retailers. This would exclude Amazon, not by discrimination, but by rejecting its anti-competitive practice.
*[Congressional representatives] who saw a video of a U.S. attack on wounded and helpless people clinging to the wreckage of a supposed drug boat on September 2 described the footage as deeply disturbing.*
*Killing of survivors sparks outrage – but entire US "drug boat" war is legally shaky.* Not to mention that any murder is vicious.
Three Uyghur brothers have been jailed in India for 12 years, without a trial, for crossing the China-India border unknowingly since there was nothing to say it was a border.
The greatest danger to them is that India may expel them to China, which systematically brainwashes Uyghurs.
A PFAS is found in high concentrations in cereal products in Europe. It is a breakdown product of other PFAS that are used in pesticides.
The thugs running the Everglades deportation prison leave a prisoner in a constricting cage outdoors for a day without water to drink.
Even at this time of year, it is often rather hot for part of the day down there. Such a cage is torture, and the lack of water to drink risks doing harm.
Google takes a stand for the deportation thugs and against their victims.
Is Google's political stand a matter of support for repression?
Or is it a matter of surrendering to bullying?
Either way, it shows the injustice of the nonfree software
of Google's app store.
At last for now you can load apps from elsewhere on Android. But Google is talking about making that harder.
A lawsuit accuses Google of activating its bullshit generator, Gemini, by default for various widely used apps, as a way of snooping on what users say in them.
It's not impossible to deactivate Gemini, but Google has set up a "dark pattern" to make it so inconvenient that people will give up.
Snooping, and dark patterns, are typical ways nonfree programs mistreat users. If you run a nonfree program, yo are helplessly at the mercy of any nonfree program's developer.
Global heating seems to have greatly damaged Britain's grain harvest, enough that farmers are considering giving up.
*[The saboteur in chief] says he will repeal Biden-era fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks.*
He must be working an hour a week to maximize use of fossil fuels.
*Washington's betrayal of its [European] allies has been averted for now,* but Europe must prepare for a world where it cannot trust the US as an ally.
How politicians that want to track everyone distract attention from the damage of doing that: by focusing public concern on the secondary danger that people of some minority groups will be tracked less accurately than most people.
As if the only danger were that of tracked wrong.
Meanwhile, the same government tries to jail everyone who states support for Palestine Action.
If you are in Britain, call your MP to tell per that tracking people as much as the UK does is Orwellian and puts democracy in danger.
And while you're it it, insist on paying cash for what you buy, so that your identity is not known.
A crash in the sardine population killed most of the African penguins population from 2004 to 2012. The species is now critically endangered.
*I'm a legal refugee in Britain. So why am I always being treated like a criminal?.*
May species are threatened with extinction from sheer excess heat.
San José State University's president has fired a tenured professor for involvement in a protest "violating rules". She is contesting this with the help of the faculty union.
Racist housing policies drove down the property values im the US neighborhoods where blacks were allowed to live; adding injury to injury. Their houses were taxed for far more than they were worth.
The article linked to just above displays symbolic bigotry by capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid endorsing bigotry, capitalize both words or neither one.) I denounce bigotry, and normally I will not link to articles that practice it. But I make exceptions for some articles because I consider them important -- and I present this comment about them.
The four factors of the apocalypse:
global heating, global hating,
global eating, global mating.
Copy this button (courtesy of R.Siddharth) to express your rejection of Facebook.
Non-oppressive Commercial E-books
Facebook's face recognition demonstrates a threat to everyone's privacy. I therefore ask people not to put photos of me on Facebook; you can do likewise.
Of course, Facebook is bad for many other reasons as well.
I'd like to make a list of countries that do not require a national identity card, and have no plans to adopt one. If you live in or have confirmed knowledge of such a country, please send email to rms at gnu.org.
Here's my list of countries with no national ID cards and no plans for one: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, UK. Australia's previous government tried to institute national ID cards, but the Labor government dropped the plan.
India has mostly finished imposing a national biometric ID number in a grand act of oppression.
Switzerland has national ID cards which are optional, but they or some other government ID card are needed for some purposes.
Iceland doesn't have ID cards as such, but they have ID numbers that citizens are forced to use frequently. For example, the national ID number is often required to rent a video or use a gym.
Denmark issues non-photo ID cards with a "person number", and many services use this card to identify people.
Norway will impose a national biometric ID card.
Ireland - national ID card by stealth.
ACLU: the five dangers of national ID cards.
Wikipedia has a list of identity card policies by country.
Stay away from certain countries because of their bad immigration policies.
Avoid flight connections in these airports because of their treatment of passengers.
People often ask how I manage to continue devoting myself to progressive activism (such as the free software movement) for years without burning out. The best way I can answer is by recommending a book, The Lifelong Activist by Hillary Rettig.
I disagree with the book on one theoretical point in the last part of the book: we shouldn't think of political activism as being marketing and sales, because those terms refer to business, and politics is something much more important than mere business. However, this doesn't diminish the value of the book's practical advice about borrowing techniques from marketing and sales.
Disclosure: I am friends with the author.
Personal Declaration of Richard Stallman and Euclides Mance on Solidarity Economy and Free Software.
I have reposted some of Rick Falkvinge's articles. As posted on his site, you can't see them in a browser without running some nonfree Javascript code which is apparently non-free. These versions show the same text, without the obstacle.
These are my political articles that are not related to the GNU operating system or free software. For GNU-related articles, see the GNU philosophy directory. You can also download copies of my book, Free Software, Free Society, 3rd edition.
"Those who profess to favor freedom, yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."Frederick Douglass, American Abolitionist, Letter to an associate, 1849
Here are notes about various issues I care about, usually with links to
more information. The current notes are
here. For all previous
notes, see this page.
See this page for information on efforts to maintain links in the political notes.
Political notes about the 2001 G8 summit in Genoa, Italy are being archived on their own page.
Richard Stallman's bio and publicity photos, and other things of interest to the press, have been moved to a separate page.
The Free Software Song, by Richard M. Stallman. You can listen to a performance of the song: Free Software Song performed by Thor Here is a variant of this song called "The Free Firmware Song".
Earth under attack from planet Koch.On doxing, and how to spell it.
A Spanish cartoon: La Ruleta
Española. 
Here I am wearing my "power tie".
Wine snobs get their comeuppance.
Here I am struggling to open a bottle of water.
My application to an join Marian Henley's ex-boyfriends list.
My funny poetry and song parodies.
A song parody, Colors of the Lisp, by Jefferson Carpenter.
The text to a filk song, Johnny v. N., by Paul Rubin.
My Puns in English (Little Leaguer, August 2019).
My Puns in Spanish (New pun: Apostasía April 2019)
My Puns in French (New pun: Microsoft à l'école July 2019)
My Puns in Italian (New pun: Quale pesce fa starnutire? New 10/2018)
My Puns in German (New 02/2016)
Linguistic Swifties (Now with: Wintu, Penutian, Cochiti, Taos, and Towa.)
--Saint
IGNUcius-- The Church of Emacs will soon
be officially listed by at least one person as his religion for
census purposes.
There are no godfathers in the Church of Emacs, since there are no gods, but you can be someone's editorfather.
Stallman Does Dallas: "I have to warn you that Texans have been known to have an adverse reaction to my personality…"
The Dalai Lama today announced the official release of Yellow Hat GNU/Linux.
I found a funny song about the Mickey Mouse Copyright Act (officially the Sonny Bono Copyright Act) which extended copyright retroactively by 20 years on works made as early as the 1920s.
If you are a geek and read Spanish, you will love Raulito el Friki, who said "Hello, world!" immediately after he was born. Here's an archive of this now-defunct comic strip.
Sleeping with Stallman at MIT.
ESR's favorite programming language: Objectivist C.
No Kludges in Cluj (June 2014)
Made for You (December 2012) (local copy) Esperanto translation
A science fiction story: Jinnetic Engineering (in Portuguese, Farsi, Spanish, Armenian, Russian, French, and Italian).My book of essays about the philosophy of Software Freedom, is available from the GNU Press.
Avec des chapeaux French song parody.
My radio program of Music from Georgia, originally broadcast on WUOG in Athens, Georgia on Oct 13, 2014.
Quantum Theory and Abortion Rights
A proposal for gender neutrality in Spanish, suitable for both speech and writing.
On Hacking: In June 2000, while visiting Korea, I did a fun hack that clearly illustrates the original and true meaning of the word "hacker".
Predicting the attack on Pearl Harbor
I would like to thank:
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