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
the GNU Project.
For the sake of separation, this site has always been
hosted elsewhere and managed separately.
I expect to have a trip to Europe in May - June. The start and end dates remain to be decided.
If you would like to invite me to speak during that trip, please write to me now so we can start discussing it. Write to `-invitation' following my three-letter username.
My talks consist of an hour of presentation and an hour of Q&A. The overall focus is software and freedom, but generally the talk includes various subtopics; we can discuss which subtopics together.
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
Richard Stallman will give a talk titled "Free/Libre Software and Freedom in the Digital Society" at 4pm on April 15 at the University of Texas in Austin, Texas.
US citizens: call on Congress to protect minors from being imprisoned and treated cruelly by the deportation thugs.
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 Trader Joe's to commit to keeping deportation thugs out.
Please spread the word.
US citizens: call on Congress to tax the rich! Pass the Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act.
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.
Young US men: call on your congresscritter and senators to get rid of the plan to bring back the draft.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
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 your federal legislators to make Congress release the names of members of Congress who used taxpayer money to silence sexual harassment claims.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
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 Secretary of Aggression Hegseth.
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 universities to join UPenn in the case to overturn an order to identify its Jewish employees to the government.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: thank the senators who voted to block weapons for Israel and hold the rest accountable.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
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 your congresscritter and senators to protect our voting rights — reject the corrupter's takeover of our elections.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: applaud the court decision insisting Pentagon respect freedom of the press.
Main switchboard: +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.
*In Europe, lobbyists are using soaring fuel prices to make the case for more dirty energy.*
I understand how professional lobbyists would find this a profitable and appealing business. What I do not understand is why so few governments hold firm and denounce the invitation to follow the road to megadeaths.
A woman in her 60s went to a No Kings rally wearing an inflatable penis costume and carrying a sign "No Dick Tator". A thug attacked her violently and she faces serious prosecution for ridiculous charges.
It seems that the local magats are using her as an example to demonstrate that they are always serious about punishment as repression, no matter how absurd the grounds for punishment are.
Major LLM dis-services show a pattern of sycophantic discourse and its effect on the user is to decrease prosocial intentions and promote dependence.
It is unfortunate that the article adopts the marketing practice of equating LLMs with "AI". LLMs are certainly artificial, but do not qualify as intelligence, and the artificial systems which do qualify as intelligence are not LLMs.
Google is ready to destroy civilization (through global heating) to make its Pretend Intelligence a success.
*EPA moves to designate microplastics and pharmaceuticals as contaminants in drinking water.*
Even if this is advocated by RFK jr, it is a reasonable direction for effort provided it is done in a rational and scientific manner.
Many countries have experienced population growth past the sustainable level. Yet people continue to call for further population growth as a way to achieve unsustainable further economic growth.
I suspect that a large part of the motive for these pseudo-solutions is to distract the non-rich from the need to reduce the share of wealth and income that the rich get.
*New North Sea drilling would barely reduce UK gas imports at all, data shows.* Planet roasters exaggerate the short-term benefit to distract the public from the urgent need to stop using fossil fuels.
The US government is expelling the daughters of Qassem Soleimani and of Ali Larijani, two high officials of Iran that were killed by the US.
What I wonder about is why their daughters moved to the US in apparent conflict with the positions and offices of their fathers. It is conceivable that they did so to act as agents of Iran, but it is also possible that they did so out of disagreement with the revolution's misogyny.
How right-wing extremist parties in some European countries attack the free press and rule of law.
Some Pretend Intelligence chatbots help gambling addicts find their way to online gambling.
In the UK, parking fines are typically enforced by private companies that can increase their income by bullying and tricking motorists. Often the tricking is followed by bullying.
I think the root cause of this specific problem with paying for parking is the policy of allowing private companies to collect parking fines. That encourages fee collection companies to compete with each other bullying and/or tricking customers. An official system for dealing with motorists that don't pay could be designed to collect effectively but not unjustly, because those who carry it out would not profit from being unfair.
Attacking the nuclear power plant at Bushehr, Iran, would threaten to spread radioactive fallout in many countries in the Middle East.
Pheap Rom, Cambodian citizen in the US who was convicted of murder and served a prison term, was deported after the end of his sentence. But why did the US send him to Eswatini rather than Cambodia?
When he arrived in Eswatini, he was immediately put in prison although his sentence was over.
He rejoices that Eswatini eventually did send him to Cambodia. It seems that Cambodia did not put him in prison.
A federal thug shot a less-lethal object at the eye of Tucker Collins, who was standing still and photographing a No Kings protest from a distance. The damage to his skull caused him to lose that eye.
The right to sue for damages is, for the victims of the gratuitous violence of thugs, an inadequate remedy — magat officials think that damages paid for maiming and killing is money well spent. Stopping this violence requires criminal prosecution, which a hateful president can easily prevent.
I suggest creating a corps of special prosecutors who cannot be removed from office except by impeachment, with the mission of prosecuting violent misconduct by any person who holds an office that grants more than the usual right to engage in violence.
Amazon says that workers seeing a medical emergency should call Amazon's emergency number rather than 911, because Amazon's response team, stationed at the warehouse itself, can get there sooner.
It sounds logical, and it might usually be true — presuming Amazon tries assiduously to provide fast and good emergency response for workers. But can we expect Amazon to care about its workers enough to do that job properly?
Green Party leader Zack Polanski called for the UK to terminate its trade treaty with Israel and apply sanctions to end Israel's beyond-defensive wars and repression of Palestinians.
Various targets that the wrecker has prominently attacked have driven him off — most recently, Iran.
It should be noted that few or none of these successful defenses against him has been a complete success — for instance, deportation thugs are still marauding in Minnesota, though not quite as intensely.
Also, such victories against the wrecker do not necessarily last. Once he is driven off, he may strike again in a different way.
Nonetheless, defeating him is much better than surrender.
An Australian family that lived in the US for 15 years, considering it "home", is moving back to Australia from disgust and fear.
The UK is concerned that buses made in China might be vulnerable to digital sabotage by remote control, through the cellular data connection.
The danger is real, in these buses and in ordinary cars and trucks. The only way to verify safety is to completely block over-the-radio software modifications.
The same danger is present in portable phones. There is always some entity with the power to force software changes, and you can never fully trust it.
Interview with a schoolteacher who told per students to keep their chromebooks in the backpack so as not to be distracted by them. Using paper made a great improvement in their learning.
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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