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.
It is more likely I can actually go if you have funds to cover the additional cost, and a speaker's fee would be nice.
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
I will have a trip to Europe in the second week of October and I am looking for invitations for additional talks in the same trip. If you would like to invite me to speak in that trip, please write to me at rms-invitation@gnu.org with "october" as the subject.
It is more likely I can actually go if you have funds to cover the additional cost, and a speaker's fee would be nice.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to reject the law that the persecutor demands, that would allow permanent occupation of US cities.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and call on per to vote to impeach antivaxxer RFK Jr to remove him as head of the department of Health and Human Services.
In firing Susan Monarez as head of the CDC, the death-spreader fully endorsed JFK Jr's perverse attack on scientific medicine, and specifically on one of its most effective methods of preventing disease.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call for ending the persecutor's illegal deportations, including those to El Salvador' torture prison and those to South Sudan.
US citizens: call on Congress to extend the ACA (Obamacare) Premium Tax Credits.
Here's how to make the actionnetwork.org letter campaign linked above work without running the site's nonfree JavaScript code. (See https://gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html for why that issue matters.)
First, make sure you have deactivated JavaScript in your browser or are using the LibreJS plug-in.
I have done the next step for you: I added `?nowrapper=true' to the end of the campaign URL before posting it above. That should bring you to a page that starts with, "Letter campaigns will not work without JavaScript!"
They indeed won't work without some manual help, but the following simple method seems adequate for many of them, including this one.
To start, fill in the personal information answers in the box on the right side of the page. That's how you say who's sending the letter.
Then click the "START WRITING" button. That will take you to a page that can't function without nonfree JavaScript code. (To ensure it doesn't function perversely by running that nonfree code, you can enable LibreJS or disable JavaScript by visiting that page.) You can finish sending without that code By editing its URL in the browser's address bar, as follows:
First, go to the end and insert `&nowrapper=true'. Then tell the browser to visit that URL. This should give you a version of the page that works without JavaScript. Edit the subject and body of your letter. Finally, click on the "SEND LETTER" button, and you're done.
This method seems to work for letter campaigns that send the letters to a fixed list of recipients, the same recipients for every sender. Editing and revisiting the URL is the only additional step needed to bypass the nonfree JavaScript code. I'm sure you'll agree it is a small effort for the result of supporting the campaign without opening your computer to unjust (and potentially malicious) software.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on the Democratic National Committee to pass Resolution #18, which would endorse ending US weapons exports to Israel.
US citizens: call on Congress to stop the fascist from making himself an autocrat.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress to pressure Israel the Gaza famine by stopping U.S. military aid to Israel now.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: Tell the would-be dictator that we don't want a dictator.
Protest on Labor Day (Monday, Sept. 1). Protest again on Sept. 20 (Saturday). These are nation-wide protests to demand we make billionaires pay for the damage and harm they are doing with help from the repressive government.
US citizens: call for stopping fast-tracked mining projects that threaten wildlife.
US citizens: Become a grassroots co-sponsor of the Stop Price Gouging in Grocery Stores Act.
US citizens: Stop the wrecker's plan to burn up NASA's climate watchdogs.
US citizens: call on Congress to stop the persecutor's military takeover of Washington D.C.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on HUD to continue offering translation services to people in their official requests and transactions.
Here's how to make the actionnetwork.org letter campaign linked above work without running the site's nonfree JavaScript code. (See https://gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html for why that issue matters.)
First, make sure you have deactivated JavaScript in your browser or are using the LibreJS plug-in.
I have done the next step for you: I added `?nowrapper=true' to the end of the campaign URL before posting it above. That should bring you to a page that starts with, "Letter campaigns will not work without JavaScript!"
They indeed won't work without some manual help, but the following simple method seems adequate for many of them, including this one.
To start, fill in the personal information answers in the box on the right side of the page. That's how you say who's sending the letter.
Then click the "START WRITING" button. That will take you to a page that can't function without nonfree JavaScript code. (To ensure it doesn't function perversely by running that nonfree code, you can enable LibreJS or disable JavaScript by visiting that page.) You can finish sending without that code By editing its URL in the browser's address bar, as follows:
First, go to the end and insert `&nowrapper=true'. Then tell the browser to visit that URL. This should give you a version of the page that works without JavaScript. Edit the subject and body of your letter. Finally, click on the "SEND LETTER" button, and you're done.
This method seems to work for letter campaigns that send the letters to a fixed list of recipients, the same recipients for every sender. Editing and revisiting the URL is the only additional step needed to bypass the nonfree JavaScript code. I'm sure you'll agree it is a small effort for the result of supporting the campaign without opening your computer to unjust (and potentially malicious) software.
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.
South Australia has banned some kinds of small single-use plastic packages, aiming to reduce total plastic use. It is a small step on a long journey, but it is a good start.
I was given one of the fish-shaped soy sauce containers this summer, and I thought, "How egregiously wasteful — so much plastic to serve so little soy sauce." Since I have soy sauce at home, as well as cutlery and chopsticks, I am trying to learn to ask restaurants not to give me any of those things with a to-go order.
*[Chicago mayor] Brandon Johnson's order directs city police not to collaborate with federal agents in immigration enforcement.*
* Lawyers say arrest of man fighting Bear Gulch fire in Oregon was illegal and demand immediate release from detention.* He was in the process of obtaining a residency permit in a way that eliminates deportation thugs' authority to arrest him.
If journalists feel they have an obligation to report what right-wing officials say about situations like this, they ought to warn the reader that these people make a habit of lying so be skeptical about all they say..
Deportation thugs cancel bail for jailed immigrants after judges order it. This could result in weeks or months more time in jail, motivated by sadism.
A team of scientists is reviving the climate.gov site that the saboteur in chief shut down.
* Therapists say they are seeing negative impacts of people increasingly turning to [bullshit-generator] chatbots for help,*
Calling these things "AI" is a marketing hype campaign. Please stop supporting the hype — reject that term for them!
Don't be defeatist — your refusal won't "change the world" by itself, but it will contribute. Your objections to the use of that misleading term can influence others.
Australian governments are allowing themselves to be thwarted too easily by self-declared "sovereign citizens", and this harms public safety.
A refugee from Turkey, who is an Atheist and not ethnically Turkish, was convicted of harassment in the form of burning a Qur'an. He will appeal the conviction.
The case is subtle because the judge ruled that some details of his other statement implied an attack on Muslims rather than criticism of Islam (burning a Qur'an is lawful to express that).
I think it is proper to make this sort of distinction, but lacking the details, I am unable to have an opinion about where the line was drawn in this case.
Here is some more information.
*[The voter suppressor] says he plans unconstitutional executive order to mandate ID for voters.*
It is clear this is unconstitutional, so what could be his motive for doing it? I see some possibilities.
Humans are predisposed to attribute feelings and intentions to almost anything, even things much stupider than a chatbot.
It is possible that some day we will discover how to build systems that can understand, suffer, and have desires. Today's bullshit-generators are far from having such capabilities, but every time someone calls them "artificial intelligence" it promotes the belief that they already do.
An anti-vaxxer, who has been put in charge of US vaccine regulation as head of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), demands the deletion of videos he posted several years ago. Maybe he finds them embarrassing now.
A doctor documenting the past statements of the anti-science campaigners re-posted them on youtube. Now they are inaccessible.
I consider this a kind of censorship of important public discourse.
The UK plans to shift rail travelers into a ticketing system based on GPS. That would increase the surveillance of everyone's movements.
Eventually they might eliminate the possibility of buying a paper ticket with cash.
British train tickets were simple enough before privatization. In effect, this system is a surveillance-based solution to a problem whose full solution is to nationalize the trains.
The US is punishing the Palestinian Authority by blocking some of its delegates to the UN General Assembly meeting,
The US, as the host of the UN General Assembly, promised to allow other countries' representatives to attend meetings.
A new form of payday loan company is the next step in developing loan dependency.
One of the reasons to pay cash is that cash helps people avoid overspending and avoid getting in disastrous debt.
*[The perverter] says he will award Rudy Giuliani the Presidential Medal of Freedom.*
And, to himself, the Presidential Medal of Evil.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to reject the law that the persecutor demands, that would allow permanent occupation of US cities.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and call on per to vote to impeach antivaxxer RFK Jr to remove him as head of the department of Health and Human Services.
In firing Susan Monarez as head of the CDC, the death-spreader fully endorsed JFK Jr's perverse attack on scientific medicine, and specifically on one of its most effective methods of preventing disease.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call for ending the persecutor's illegal deportations, including those to El Salvador' torture prison and those to South Sudan.
The bully claims to have fired one of the directors of the Federal Reserve, specifically Lisa Cook. Presidents are not supposed to have the power to do that. She is suing to block the effort.
Indonesian president Prabowo is increasing the influence of the military in civilian life — recruiting large numbers of "military" personnel to do civilian jobs such as farming.
He claims Indonesia needs a larger army, but why would that be? Unless Indonesia and China head into a confrontation, which does not seem to be developing, I see no reason why a larger army would be needed. Supposing it ever is someday needed, "military" battalions for agriculture, pharmaceutical production and conversion of plantations will not be of much help in a war.
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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