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: urge states to sue to stop the destruction of the Department of Education.
You can find your state governor phone number at USA.gov. If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Federal Employee Civil Relief Act so as to protect federal workers from eviction during the shutdown.
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121 If you phone or sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on state pension officials to vote the pensions' shares against the muskrat's proposal for Tesla to pay him $1 trillion.
To contact a state or territory governor or state agencies, see USA.gov. If you do, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on news networks to be honest about Tylenol's non-effect on pregnancy.
US citizens: call on Congress to stop the bully's far-right crusade against political opponents.
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121 If you phone or sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to protect voting rights. Pass the Redistricting Reform Act.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Speaker Johnson to stop lying about No Kings protests.
If you sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on the Supreme Court to approve the lower court decisions and keep troops out of our cities.
If you sign, 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.
Deportation thugs were caught falsifying accusations against protesters.
Deportation thugs have charged protesters with "conspiracy" and "intimidation" for a nonviolent protest. One of them is a candidate for the House of Representatives.
*US climate activists condemn 18-month jail term for non-violent art museum protester.*
If they had actually damaged the art, that would deserve punishment. But they took care to make their "damage" purely symbolic, leaving the painting undamaged in fact. This punishment was pure injustice.
It appears that they were jailed for 6 months awaiting trial, too.
Israel permitted Egypt and the ICRC to aid HAMAS in searching for hostages' corpses in the part of Gaza where Palestinians are now usually shot on sight. This included equipment to dig up corpses buried under rubble. Finally, Israel was allowing HAMAS to do what Israel demanded it do.
Just a couple of days later, Israel bombarded Gaza widely, claiming that this was to punish HAMAS for not yet having finished that job.
This is absurd. It seems that Netanyahu sees no need to have a coherent policy, or even to pretend to have one.
Canada's political ad in the US, which quoted from a speech by Ronald Reagan in which he denounced tariffs in general (because he advocated friction-less trade to boost business), didn't mention a narrow exception that Reagan has described in that same speech.
The exception was to punish alleged violation of a trade treaty for low tariffs.
Here is a detailed analysis comparing the quotation to the whole speech.
Was this omission a serious misrepresentation? I don't think so. The subject of the ad was the bully's tariffs on imports from Canada, and that exception isn't pertinent to this subject.
I don't entirely agree with Reagan's general position. It is possible to use tariffs to boost domestic industry, and legitimate to do so. However, for that method to succeed, it must be applied with careful thought — something that the US government has failed to do with its tariffs.
*Gorilla habitats and pristine forest at risk as DRC opens half of country to oil and gas drilling bids.*
In the long term, the transitory "value" of burning that fossil fuel will be insignificant, but the cost of the damage it does could be irreplaceable loss.
The US government claims it is entitled to kill people traveling in small boats in the Caribbean, but admits it has no evidence that they are really "terrorists", and does not even know who they are.
Most people drastically underestimate how much richer the rich in their country are than ordinary workers. When they see the facts, many start advocating systematic redistribution.
British protesters who colored Stonehenge temporarily orange using food coloring were prosecuted, absurdly, for nonexistent "damage".
Repressive exaggerations like this are part of the standard playbook of governments that have submitted to the power of the plutocrats.
The luxury effect in urban ecology: richer neighborhoods have more diversity of wildlife.
Journalists in Russia report that commanders are torturing or killing soldiers who refuse suicide missions.
I would expect that the reason these commanders are not punished is that they are doing what Putin wants them to do.
The war-lover threatens to send US troops to invade Nigeria to wipe out their equivalent of the Taliban.
The US tried this in Afghanistan, with the initial support of most of the population, but the effort ultimately failed. The war-lover in his first term was unable to make it work, and then spoke of pulling out the US troops. Biden displayed political courage by actually pulling the plug on the failed intervention. But the war lover claims that in Nigeria victory would be easy.
Or maybe it is just another bluff to look tough.
Scientists are warning that Earth is tipping into disaster and strong actions would be needed to pull it back from there.
*[The deportation thug agency] violates its own policy by holding people in secretive rooms for days or weeks.
*Kat Abughazaleh, progressive candidate for Congress, has been indicted for "impeding" a deportation thug during a protest. Basically, getting in the thug's way.
The bully plans to supply only half the normal amount of food stamps during the shutdown.
The shutdown plan is designed to use them as hostages in several ways. Naturally he doesn't want to completely release his hostages. So his advisors are coming up with legal technicalities with which to delay and cut.
US citizens: urge states to sue to stop the destruction of the Department of Education.
You can find your state governor phone number at USA.gov. If you phone, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Federal Employee Civil Relief Act so as to protect federal workers from eviction during the shutdown.
Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121 If you phone or sign, please spread the word!
US citizens: call on state pension officials to vote the pensions' shares against the muskrat's proposal for Tesla to pay him $1 trillion.
To contact a state or territory governor or state agencies, see USA.gov. If you do, please spread the word!
Greg Palast writes of repeated US attempts to overthrow the government of Venezuela to steal its enormous oil reserves.
He also compares Maduro, an election cheater like the corrupter, with Chavez, who won honestly.
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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