Richard Stallman Quotes

Copying all or parts of a program is as natural to a programmer as breathing, and as productive. It ought to be as free.

I have not seen anyone assume that all the citizens of New York are guilty of murder, violence, robbery, perjury, or writing proprietary software.

Without absolute certainty, what do we do? We do the best we can. Injustice is happening now; suffering is happening now. We have choices to make now. To insist on absolute certainty before starting to apply ethics to life decisions is a way of choosing to be amoral.

Open source is a development methodology; free software is a social movement.

Facebook is not your friend, it is a surveillance engine.

Sharing is good, and with digital technology, sharing is easy.

You know, if you were *really* going to starve, you'd be justified in writing proprietary software.

Android is very different from the GNU/Linux operating system because it contains very little of GNU. Indeed, just about the only component in common between Android and GNU/Linux is Linux, the kernel.

Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone.

While corporations dominate society and write the laws, each advance in technology is an opening for them to further restrict its users.

Control over the use of one's ideas really constitutes control over other people's lives; and it is usually used to make their lives more difficult.

My favorite programming languages are Lisp and C. However, since around 1992 I have worked mainly on free software activism, which means I am too busy to do much programming. Around 2008 I stopped doing programming projects.

Playfully doing something difficult, whether useful or not, that is hacking.

The interesting thing about cloud computing is that we've redefined cloud computing to include everything that we already do.

It's clear that other problems such as [ ... ] the domination of business over government, science, thought, and society, are much bigger than non-free software.

Would a dating service on the net be 'frowned upon' ... ? I hope not. But even if it is, don't let that stop you from notifying me via net mail if you start one.

Think 'free speech,' not 'free beer.'

Many users of the GNU/Linux system will not have heard the ideas of free software. They will not be aware that we have ideas, that a system exists because of ethical ideals, which were omitted from ideas associated with the term 'open source.'

I have met bright students in computer science who have never seen the source code of a large program. They may be good at writing small programs, but they can't begin to learn the different skills of writing large ones if they can't see how others have done it.

To be able to choose between proprietary software packages is to be able to choose your master. Freedom means not having a master. And in the area of computing, freedom means not using proprietary software.

The GNU GPL was not designed to be "open source".

GNU, which stands for Gnu's Not Unix, is the name for the complete Unix-compatible software system which I am writing so that I can give it away free to everyone who can use it.

Free software is software that respects your freedom and the social solidarity of your community. So it's free as in freedom.

I did write some code in Java once, but that was the island in Indonesia.

Steve Jobs, the pioneer of the computer as a jail made cool, designed to sever fools from their freedom, has died.

If programmers deserve to be rewarded for creating innovative programs, by the same token they deserve to be punished if they restrict the use of these programs.

Once GNU is written, everyone will be able to obtain good system software free, just like air.

Facebook collects a lot of data from people and admits it. And it also collects data which isn't admitted. And Google does too. As for Microsoft, I don't know. But I do know that Windows has features that send data about the user.

A smartphone is a computer - it's not built using a computer - the job it does is the job of being a computer. So, everything we say about computers, that the software you run should be free - you should insist on that - applies to smart phones just the same. And likewise to those tablets.

Prior art is as effective as US soldiers in Iraq: They control the ground they stand on, and nothing more. I used to say Vietnam, but, well, you know ...

The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women's fashion.

It doesn't take special talents to reproduce
even plants can do it. On the other hand, contributing to a program like Emacs takes real skill. That is really something to be proud of. It helps more people, too.

One reason you should not use web applications to do your computing is that you lose control.

People said I should accept the world. Bullshit! I don't accept the world.

When I launched the development of the GNU system, I explicitly said the purpose of developing this system is so we can use our computers and have freedom, thus if you use some other free system instead but you have freedom, then it's a success. It's not popularity for our code but it's success for our goal.

The idea of copyright did not exist in ancient times, when authors frequently copied other authors at length in works of non-fiction. This practice was useful, and is the only way many authors' works have survived even in part.

The paradigm of competition is a race: by rewarding the winner, we encourage everyone to run faster. When capitalism really works this way, it does a good job; but its defenders are wrong in assuming it always works this way.

I'm trying to change the way people approach knowledge and information in general. I think that to try to own knowledge, to try to control whether people are allowed to use it, or to try to stop other people from sharing it, is sabotage.

People sometimes ask me if it is a sin in the Church of Emacs to use vi. Using a free version of vi is not a sin; it is a penance. So happy hacking.

Software patents are dangerous to software developers because they impose monopolies on software ideas.

Facebook mistreats its users. Facebook is not your friend; it is a surveillance engine. For instance, if you browse the Web and you see a 'like' button in some page or some other site that has been displayed from Facebook. Therefore, Facebook knows that your machine visited that page.

The Adobe flash plug-in is non-free software, and people should not install it, or suggest installing it, or even tell people it exists.

Officially, MPAA stands for Motion Picture Association of America, but I suggest that MPAA stands for Malicious Power Attacking All.

Free software' is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of 'free' as in 'free speech,' not as in 'free beer'.

Globalizing a bad thing makes it worse. But globalizing a good thing is usually good.

Value your freedom or you will lose it, teaches history. 'Don't bother us with politics', respond those who don't want to learn.

Our mailing lists (and their repeater newsgroups) are only for the purpose of promoting proprietary software.

I consider that the Golden Rule requires that if I like a program I must share it with other people who like it. Software sellers want to divide the users and conquer them, making each user agree not to share with others. I refuse to break solidarity with other users in this way.

By the way, I hope you all know about the worldwide boycott of Coca Cola company for things like murdering union organizers in Colombia. See the site killercoke.org.

The principal lesson of Emacs is that a language for extensions should not be a mere "extension language". It should be a real programming language, designed for writing and maintaining substantial programs. Because people will want to do that!

The desire to be rewarded for one's creativity does not justify depriving the world in general of all or part of that creativity.

In essence, Chrome OS is the GNU/Linux operating system. However, it is delivered without the usual applications, and rigged up to impede and discourage installing applications.

Creativity can be a social contribution, but only in so far as society is free to use the results.

Because I don't believe that it's really desirable to have security on a computer, I shouldn't be willing to help uphold the security regime.

Also, because schools must teach the spirit of goodwill, the habit of helping others around you, every class should have this rule: students, if you bring software to class you may not keep it for yourself.

I decided not to have children. (...) I am convinced I made a wise personal decision in avoiding this. But I was not the only one that benefited from it. Everyone did. Not having children is an important contribution to humanity. My decision probably reduced the 2050 population by 5 to 10 people. (...) My decision was a contribution, and enabled me to make another contribution: to launch GNU and the free software movement. Having no dependents, I could dedicate myself to what seemed right rather than to whatever someone with money told me to do. If you are reading this page, it is because that decision enabled me to make contributions to humanity that people appreciate.

Every decision a person makes stems from the person's values and goals. People can have many different goals and values; fame, profit, love, survival, fun, and freedom, are just some of the goals that a good person might have. When the goal is to help others as well as oneself, we call that idealism. My work on free software is motivated by an idealistic goal: spreading freedom and cooperation. I want to encourage free software to spread, replacing proprietary software that forbids cooperation, and thus make our society better.

If the users don't control the program, the program controls the users. With proprietary software, there is always some entity, the "owner" of the program, that controls the program and through it, exercises power over its users. A nonfree program is a yoke, an instrument of unjust power.

Fighting patents one by one will never eliminate the danger of software patents, any more than swatting mosquitoes will eliminate malaria.

Anything that prevents you from being friendly, a good neighbour, is a terror tactic.

If you use a proprietary program or somebody else's web server, you're defenceless. You're putty in the hands of whoever developed that software.

Proprietary software is an injustice.

Paying isn't wrong, and being paid isn't wrong. Trampling other people's freedom and community is wrong, so the free software movement aims to put an end to it, at least in the area of software.

In the U.S., you even lose legal rights if you store your data in a company's machines instead of your own. The police need to present you with a search warrant to get your data from you; but if they are stored in a company's server, the police can get it without showing you anything. They may not even have to give the company a search warrant.

Whether gods exist or not, there is no way to get absolute certainty about ethics. Without absolute certainty, what do we do? We do the best we can.

For personal reasons, I do not browse the web from my computer. (I also have not net connection much of the time.) To look at page I send mail to a demon which runs wget and mails the page back to me. It is very efficient use of my time, but it is slow in real time.

Snow is so beautiful, it doesn't have to be useful.

If you can find a host for me that has a friendly parrot, I will be very very glad ... DON'T buy a parrot figuring that it will be a fun surprise for me. To acquire a parrot is a major decision: it is likely to outlive you. If you don't know how to treat the parrot, it could be emotionally scarred and spend many decades feeling frightened and unhappy. If you buy a captured wild parrot, you will promote a cruel and devastating practice, and the parrot will be emotionally scarred before you get it. Meeting that sad animal is not an agreeable surprise.

If there is a Like button in a page, Facebook knows who visited that page. And it can get IP address of the computer visiting the page even if the person is not a Facebook user.

There is no system but GNU and Linux is one of it's kernels

CD stores have the disadvantage of an expensive inventory, but digital bookshops would need no such thing: they could write copies at the time of sale on to memory sticks, and sell you one if you forgot your own.