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"Richard_Stallman_at_LibrePlanet_2019" by Ruben Rodriguez
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"Richard_Stallman_at_LibrePlanet_2019" by Ruben Rodriguez
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This is the personal web site of Richard Stallman.
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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
On Friday January 23rd, 2026, RMS will give a talk at Georgia Institute of Technology from 2-5 P.M. EST.
Check out Techright's article mentioning that it is Richard Stallman's First Talk in a U.S. College Since 2018
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and call for impeaching RFK Jr.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject renaming the Kennedy Center as the "Trump-Kennedy Center".
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: phone your state legislators and call on them to reject digital state ID systems. Details may vary, but those systems will surely require people to run nonfree software to use them; in addition, they will enable government agencies to identify people more often.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: Condemn the official White House enemies list as an attack on the press and on democracy.
US citizens: call on Congress to investigate the corporations that have donated to the cheater's new ballroom.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on Congress to impeach Kristi Noem.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call for limiting denaturalization to people who committed atrocious crimes before gaining US citizenship.
US citizens: call on Congress to restore USAID humanitarian funding — help poor countries against hunger and plagues.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
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: phone your congresscritter and call for impeaching RFK Jr.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on Congress to reject renaming the Kennedy Center as the "Trump-Kennedy Center".
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: phone your state legislators and call on them to reject digital state ID systems. Details may vary, but those systems will surely require people to run nonfree software to use them; in addition, they will enable government agencies to identify people more often.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: Condemn the official White House enemies list as an attack on the press and on democracy.
US citizens: call on Congress to investigate the corporations that have donated to the cheater's new ballroom.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
Conjecture: the undisclosed purpose of sending deportation thugs into major Democratic cities and cause chaos is to perfect a system for causing chaos — with the plan to use it to rig the next election.
The article's text is not visible with LibreJS enabled, but it does work with Javascript disabled outright.
The cops of metropolitan London appear to be using new "stop and search" power to harass and intimidate protests on behalf of Palestinians' rights.
The nominal purpose of this power is to catch people who are carrying knives. However, it appears that none of the protesters they searched had a knife.
*Activist groups to challenge New South Wales's [anti-]protest laws on right to free speech grounds.*
The bullshitter has presented a new excuse to cancel offshore wind generator projects — claiming that they might interfere with military radar coverage.
The military studied this question before but concluded it was not a real problem. I suspect that the bullshitter's henchmen made this up as an excuse to cancel wind generators.
The mayor of Manchester apologized to queer people for the persecution that the Manchester thug department systematically directed at them in the 1980s (and, I suspect, before and after that decade). Many other police forces in Britain have apologized.
The persecutor's henchmen plan to store prisoners for deportation in warehouses, literally. Up to around 10,000 people in each. In effect, concentration camps.
Warehouses are not designed to provide water, toilets or even air ventilation for so many people, let alone keep the temperature warm enough for people with little clothing.
ChatGPT appears to have led one user into a world of delusions, in which he murdered his mother then killed himself. It refuses to release the log of his conversations with ChatGPT to the court. Given the circumstances, the court ought to compel the company to hand over the full log.
However, looking at the issue more generally, a system which insists on identifying each user is unacceptable for any serious matter. The ability to track a person's interest is sure to be tracked by the secret police.
Canada is adopting artificial restrictions on applying for asylum, designed to prevent many people's applications from ever being considered on the merits of the facts.
One of these excuses is to pretend that the US is a safe country for refugees, which it certainly isn't nowadays.
The persecution of Cop City protesters continues as the US Department of Injustice retains seized property (letters, phones, etc) of many protesters for years.
An article explains the economic danger of the current "AI" bubble, and the long-term menace of possible human-level artificial intelligence controlled by a manipulative and powerful company, while it also punctures the hype campaign that says LLMs are "intelligence" and capable of thinking, understanding and believing.
The magats plan to eliminate the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Its climate modeling demonstrates the danger of greenhouse gas emissions, so planet roasters want to put an end to honest climate modeling.
When only fossil fuel companies do climate modeling, they will be able to conceal some parts and spin others, leaving no opportunity for peaceful democratic action to save civilization, democracy and science.
* Cutting-edge therapies exist, but the market cannot deliver them cheaply. Britain must build NHS capacity so that cures become collective goods, not expensive products.* This conclusion goes for every country.
We should replace the patent system, which systematically makes new medicine too expensive for most people, with a different way of funding medical research.
A UK group that accepts donations to provide aid to people in Palestine has had its bank account frozen as part of an investigation into the arbitrarily banned protest group "Palestine Action." The investigators and the bank have told the group nothing about the reason it is being screwed.
For years, UK organizations that support human rights and welfare in various ways have had their bank accounts frozen without explanation.
Coping with the future of the climate disaster demands political honesty about extreme weather.
Because it's not enough to cope with the current level of disaster. Even more important is to avoid making it worse.
Protecting the rainforest of the Darien Gap.
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:
Please send comments on these web pages to rms at gnu period org.
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