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
US citizens: call on Spotify to cease running recruiting ads for the bully's deportation thugs.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code—not trivial, but not hard.
If you send a letter, please spread the word!
In my letter I said that if Spotify stops using DRM, makes it possible to pay anonymously, and makes it possible to be a customer without running nonfree software, I could consider being one. Thus, I used this letter for two issues: the issue of supporting the deportation thugs and the issue of unjust software.
US citizens: call on Congress to stop threatened U.S. military attack against Venezuela, Mexico, and other countries in Latin America.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass a law to ban members of Congress from trading stocks.
US citizens: call on the IRS commissioner to protect nonprofits from the bully's "National Security" Memo.
US citizens: call on Congress to make the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes — which is considerably more than they pay now.
The main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121. If you message Congress, please spread the word!
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and call on per to vote for the Protect America's Workforce Act. This is urgent now, because the discharge petition has enough signatures and compels the House to vote on this bill soon.
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.
Many countries in Europe, and Australia, have rejected the bully's capitulation plan for Ukraine.
I hope those presenting an alternative "peace plan" have verified that Ukraine will accept it, before arguing for it.
The bully's surrender plan for Ukraine is obviously unjust, a reward to a dictator that wants to conquer more territory. This article describes additional secondary aspects that would make Ukraine a sitting duck if Putin ever wants to conquer the rest of it.
*How Universities Used Counterterror Intelligence-Sharing Hubs to Surveil [student activists for Palestinians' rights].*
Fast-acting mind-affecting drugs have been developed for use as weapons.
An inquiry found that Bogus Johnson did a careless job of handling the Covid-19 pandemic, and this caused thousands of avoidable deaths. The relatives of the deceased demand to punish him for this by denying him public funds.
Senator Kelly rebuked Republicans in Congress for almost complete silence about the persecutor's death threats against him and five other congressional Democrats.
He contrasted that with their exaggerated reproach of those who dared criticize Charles Kirk's bigotry and hatred after he had been killed (but never claimed that his wrongs justified killing him).
These two contrasting reactions of Republican officials, juxtaposed, demonstrate that they have abandoned the idea of a moral standard of conduct that is above politics. They have shamelessly replaced it with cowardly submission to partisan extremism encompassing political terrorism.
A few exceptions may exist even though the general tendency is clear. If you know of any significant exception — any prominent Republican who publicly denounces the persecutor's death threat — please do tell me the specifics.
Anyone who leans Republican but doesn't want to be changed by peer pressure into accepting political terrorism should reject and denounce the Republican Party now!
An exercise for the reader: what reasons make Vance's response invalid? I see two.
US citizens: call on Spotify to cease running recruiting ads for the bully's deportation thugs.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code—not trivial, but not hard.
If you send a letter, please spread the word!
In my letter I said that if Spotify stops using DRM, makes it possible to pay anonymously, and makes it possible to be a customer without running nonfree software, I could consider being one. Thus, I used this letter for two issues: the issue of supporting the deportation thugs and the issue of unjust software.
US citizens: call on Congress to stop threatened U.S. military attack against Venezuela, Mexico, and other countries in Latin America.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass a law to ban members of Congress from trading stocks.
US citizens: call on the IRS commissioner to protect nonprofits from the bully's "National Security" Memo.
The president of Serbia is accused of involvement in a perverse war profiteering scheme which allowed rich foreigners to pay to come to a hill near Sarajevo and shoot noncombatants from a long distance with a telescopic sight.
Many of the doctors in Britain are immigrants. The growth of right-wing hatred in the UK, fomented by organized right-wing extremists, is increasingly driving them to leave and practice medicine elsewhere.
The deal that ended the shutdown had a pernicious giveaway to Big Food that negated until 2028 some state regulations for food safety.
I expect this will harm some Americans but not thousands. Still, Congress needs a way to designate a bill as "free from tangential riders" that would invalidate any that somehow appeared in the text finally passed.
British thugs tortured Peter Sullivan into making a false confession of murder. (DNA evidence later proved that he was not the murderer.)
False convictions seem to happen often. Perhaps the legal system ought to show more doubt confessions which no had evidence to support them.
Even normally cool regions such as Scandinavia are having deadly heat waves boosted by global heating.
"22 days over 30°C" does not sound like much of a danger to people who live in tropical countries. But the people and ecosystems in Scandinavia are not accustomed to this heat, so things go wrong. The engineered systems there were not designed for this heat, so they malfunction. And hundreds of people dis. Elsewhere, it is sometimes tens of thousands who die.
I expect that not all the fatalities caused by the heatwave occur during the heatwave. Such is the case for big storms: the local death rate remains higher for decades after.
The article warns that heating could make reindeer-herding impossible. Heat that makes reindeer too hot to move out of the shade, if continued for longer, would stare them.
In climate disaster, The inability to continue our way of life would hardly be limited to indigenous peoples. It would affect just about everyone.
Searching on TikTok for information on birth control finds right-wing medical disinformation.
To observe the effects of ocean acidification, scientists retraced the path of Scott's Antarctic expedition, and collected sea animals to compare with the samples he collected. The sea urchins have become very fragile, and ocean acidification seems to be the cause.
*Fish [species, in the Mekong River,] once as large as grizzly bears have become far smaller in recent years due to overfishing, dams and climate crisis.*
US states give some federal agencies unlimited access to their drivers license records — and now these agencies may be using them for facial recognition, disregarding laws and human rights.
The US is hiring various countries as private deportation prisons for the US.
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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