Richard Stallman's Personal Site


The photo comes from wikimedia.org
"Richard_Stallman_at_LibrePlanet_2019"
by Ruben Rodriguez

I continue to be the Chief GNUisance of the GNU Project.
This is my long-term commitment and I plan to continue.
You may have heard or read critical statements about me; please make up your own mind.

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RSS site feed for the most recent political notes and new material.

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.

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.

FSF Giving Guide

Robert Reich explains how the bullshitter and Republicans are trying to spread chaos to discourage non-fascists from voting. After creating as much real chaos as they can, they pretend there is even more of it, hoping Americans will give up and not vote, or support a fascist strong man.

I urge you to vote in Democratic primaries for the progressive candidate, if there is one. And in the final election I urge you to vote for Democrats, unless a liberal independent had a good chance of winning.

Canadians: I suggest you seek election advice at a local chapter of a group that pushes to curb global heating and has the courage to say, "Canada should stop exporting fossil fuel." It will at least use the right goals to suggest who to vote for in your area.

Join a Friday climate strike.
That page is made by scraping Fridays for Future so you can get the information without running any Javascript code. I would be very glad if they made the information on their own site accessible from the Free World; then we could simply refer people to their site and do without the scraping etc.

I am limiting the number of new political notes per day so as not to overload the volunteers who install new notes. If you'd like to help, please write to rms at gnu period org.

Is your bank pressuring you to use biometric ID? If so, please write to rms at gnu dot org. It could be useful if you document what is happening.

Please join the Free Software Foundation to support its work for your freedom.

"They" is plural — for singular antecedents, use singular gender-neutral pronouns.

Link Policy

The largest part of the site is the political notes, and they are typically updated every day.

I'm looking for people to

Civil Liberties Minute:

[America Means Civil Liberties / Patriotism Means Protecting 
             Them / www.aclu.org/safefree ]
graphic by Susan Henson
Americans, you may wish to copy this icon to your own page, as a way of showing what patriotism means to you.

Upcoming talks

Urgent action items

Recording of Guantanamero

Listen to the recording of Guantanamero, a protest song written in Spanish. The recording is in Ogg Vorbis format. To install an Ogg Vorbis player, see the FSF's Ogg Players page.

There Ought to Be a Law

More items where there ought to be a law.

Quotes

Here are some quotations that I particularly like.

Most recent Political Notes and News Items

(RSS Feed)

You can now read the political notes on Mastodon.

Physicianality as a crime, UK
18 March 2024

British physicians are threatened with loss of their license to practice medicine as further punishment for being convicted of climate defense protests.

You can see this as further damage to non-rich Britons by Tories, who don't care about the non-rich, or as further repression intended to keep the drilling for oil and gas going.

Endemic polio eradication
18 March 2024

Humanity is closing in on the last few areas where wild polio may still survive.

North Sea oil, plans and protests
18 March 2024

*Climate activists across Europe block access to North Sea oil infrastructure.*

Governments that refuse to recognize that drilling for oil and methane is deadly are showing contempt for the lives of their young citizens.

Human development index, UN
18 March 2024

Increased plutocracy is increasing the income disparity between countries along with income disparity within most countries.

AI discrimination
18 March 2024

Bullshit generators such as ChatGPT increasingly show racial stereotypes in judging people's employ-ability.

They don't actually understand anything, including the concept of "employ-ability" or "bigotry", so employers should not use them for that purpose.

Olivia Rodrigo concerns
18 March 2024

Singer Olivia Rodrigo became a champion of freedom by distributing condoms and emergency contraception pills at her concerts. But now she has ceased that practice, citing a vague concern about "children" that attend.

I can't tell whether "children" in her statement refers to the people we normally call "children" — pre-teens — or to everyone under 18. But either way, I can't see even a lick of sense in that decision to stop. Whatever a person's age, if person is going to be sexually penetrated, it is good for that person to have a condom available. Whatever a female's age, if she may get pregnant, it is useful for her to have emergency contraception available.

Unless she presents clearly some other reason, I have to think that she has yielded to an incoherent right-wing moral panic.

Neuralink concerns
18 March 2024

Advances in brain-machine interfaces are dangerous.

Musk has spoken in favor of fascism more than once. He could make Neuralink implants trigger pleasure in the brain whenever the patient hears words that endorse fascism. If the Neuralink itself is not capable of relaying the sound that the patient is hearing, the apparatus to run it could simply have an internet-connected microphone.

The only way to make them safe is if users have full control over the software that operates them and talks directly with them. They also need to be able to study the circuit diagram and verify that the device was built honestly.

Voter Rolls Being Targeted
18 March 2024

Unofficial groups of Republicans are trying to rig elections by pressuring local election officials in some states to remove voters from he voting lists.

In Michigan, Nevada, and Georgia they have had successes.

Keir Starmer Labour Party
18 March 2024

George Monbiot: *It's as if Keir Starmer is seeking out all the positive reasons to vote Labour — and deleting them.*

Punjabi Farmers and Modi
18 March 2024

Modi made a campaign promise to Indian farmers, then broke it. When they protested this, they met with repression

of the sort that he had previously reserved for Muslims.

Urgent: A global minimum tax
18 March 2024

US citizens: call on Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to endorse a global minimum tax on billionaire wealth ahead of the G20 summit.

Facebook as TikTok
18 March 2024

Congress is considering a bill to demand TikTok to be sold to a non-Chinese owner, in order to keep operating in the US. Yet articles continue to talk about this as a plan to ban TikTok, rather than a plan to disconnect it from China. Why misrepresent this point?

Its intense collection of personal data clearly has the power to increase the harm it does, compared with Facebook. What that suggests is a law to prohibit any company from collecting data in this way. Ideally it would also limit the data Facebook can collect about its useds — that would increase the benefit of the law.

Richard Stallman will give a talk
18 March 2024

In Rapperswil, Switzerland, Richard Stallman will give a talk. The title of the talk will be Free Software and Your Freedom.

Dividing the lands, Scotland
18 March 2024

Scotland plans to require owners of large tracts of land to divide their lands among multiple owners.

It is generally a good thing to split up big properties of any kind.

Greenland's climate-effect on Europe
17 March 2024

* Location, extent and strength of recent freshwater [melt] events [in Greenland] suggests an unusually warm and dry summer over southern Europe this year.*

Worker efficiency as license for plunder
17 March 2024

*The cries from Britain's struggling CEOs are growing louder — can they survive on a mere £4.4m a year?*

That amount is clearly an average value. To assign that amount to each and every CEO is an oversimplification, and incorrect. Probably some of those CEOs receive a mere £2m per year.

We could feel sorry for them, if we forget about how low-wage workers are suffering in Britain today.

Lobby kills decarbonization effort, UK
17 March 2024

*UK scheme to spur take-up of heat pumps delayed after gas lobby pressure.*

Over and over, the UK government has dropped or slowed its efforts to curb global heating, putting the priority on planet roaster profits.

An office of heat, Phoenix
17 March 2024

Phoenix had over 600 excess deaths last summer.

At present levels of heating, many of these deaths can be prevented, but that depends on willingness to spend money to protect the health of poor people — often homeless people. Plutocrats consider that a waste of money that could instead be increasing their investments.

It may also depend on whether workplaces are willing to permit precautions to be taken. The Republicans that control Florida oppose that.

Lobbying efforts against auto-emissions
17 March 2024

*Automakers Spend Millions to [weaken] EPA's Proposed [limitations on pollution that damages human health].*

Urgent security need: geoengineering, US
17 March 2024

* Impact on ecosystems [of geoengineering] must be predicted before technology is used, US atmospheric science agency chief says.*

So far, human geoengineering has been done unthinkingly, as a side effect of actions carried out for other purposes. Some of these side effects are extremely dangerous. Sometimes humans were ignorant of the eventual consequences; in other cases, they corruptly buried the knowledge. Some of them continue the disinformation today.

I see no reason to object in principle to intentional geoengineering. With the knowledge we have learned, and some planning, we could make it less dangerous than unintentional geoengineering has been.

But that should not be an excuse to let the disinformationists win. Reducing the causes of our harmful geoengineering has to be safer than trying to counter one geoengineering with another.


The four factors of the apocalypse:
   global heating, global hating,
   global eating, global mating.


[More Cartoons]


Not f'd. You won't find us on Facebook

Copy this button (courtesy of R.Siddharth) to express your rejection of Facebook.


E-books

Non-oppressive Commercial E-books


Don't use Facebook

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.


Boycott Harry Potter Books, Movies, etc.



Internet Music EULAS



Business Supremacy Treaties



Countries to Stay Away From



No national identity cards

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.


Borders

Stay away from certain countries because of their bad immigration policies.


Flight connections

Avoid flight connections in these airports because of their treatment of passengers.


The Lifelong Activist

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.


Bob Chassell

Writing (mostly science fiction) by my friend Bob Chassell who recently died.


Solidarity Economy and Free Software

Personal Declaration of Richard Stallman and Euclides Mance on Solidarity Economy and Free Software.


Falkvinge articles

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.


Long-term action items


Political Articles

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'.

Political notes

"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."

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.

Media/Press/Bios

Richard Stallman's bio and publicity photos, and other things of interest to the press, have been moved to a separate page.

Travel experiences

Photos about my travels

Scientific Links


Some humor

The berry torture.

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".

A song parody, Colors of the Lisp, by Jefferson Carpenter.

Earth under attack from planet Koch.

On doxing, and how to spell it.

Futon Physics

A Spanish cartoon: La Ruleta Española. thumbnail

The Night before M-x-mas

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.

My Cartoons

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 Portuguese

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.)

I am a
     Saint In the Church Of Emacs --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.

Pre-Zen Studies.

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.

Un malentendido gracioso.

ESR's favorite programming language: Objectivist C.

American Extremists

My Small Mouth

The huns and the writs.

No Kludges in Cluj (June 2014)

Hammer into Anvil

Fiction

Made for You (December 2012) (local copy) Esperanto translation

A science fiction story: Jinnetic Engineering (in Portuguese, Farsi, Spanish, Armenian, Russian, French, and Italian).

The Right to Read

Books

My book of essays about the philosophy of Software Freedom, is available from the GNU Press.

Stallman on Love

Love and Dance

My Childhood Sweetheart

Made for You

My Former Personal Ad

Non-Political Articles

Am I Doctor Stallman?

Avec des chapeaux French song parody.

My radio program of Music from Georgia, originally broadcast on WUOG in Athens, Georgia on Oct 13, 2014.

Resolving the trolley problem

Quantum Theory and Abortion Rights

A proposal for gender neutrality in Spanish, suitable for both speech and writing.

Origin of the POSIX name.

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".

My Childhood Sweetheart

Love and Dance

Predicting the attack on Pearl Harbor

Certificate of confusion

Links

Thanks

I would like to thank:


Please send comments on these web pages to rms at gnu period org.

Copyright © 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 Richard Stallman
Verbatim copying and redistribution of this entire page are permitted provided this notice is preserved.
Verbatim copying and redistribution of any of the photos in the photos subdirectory is permitted under the Creative Commons Noderivs license version 3.0 or later. You can copy and redistribute the photo of me playing music to the butterfly under the Creative Commons Noderivs Nocommercial license version 3.0 or later. Any other photos of me in this (the toplevel) directory may be copied and redistributed under the Creative Commons Noderivs license version 3.0