Richard Stallman

Don Rosenberg's review in LWM (Vol. 3, issue 4) of Larry Rosen's book, Open Source Licensing, did double-duty as a platform for FUD about the GNU GPL. The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL for short) was not the first free software license, but was the first to embody the concep... (more)

Last July 6, the free-software community and programmers everywhere awaited a showdown in the European parliament over software patents. The outcome was far from predictable. If we, the free-software proponents, had lost, it would have been a final defeat in Europe. The relevant ... (more)

Richard Stallman writes: Maureen O'Gara's review in Linux Business Week of Larry Rosen's book misrepresents the Free Software Foundation's views, when it says we criticized Rosen for "recognizing...licenses other than the GPL". Recognizing other licenses as legitimate is entirely c... (more)

Last year IBM took a significant step forward in cooperation with the free software community by offering blanket licenses for 500 of its patents to all free software developers. This does not cover all of IBM's software patents, which must number in the thousands. And there are ... (more)

Headnote As of December 2006, Sun is in the middle of rereleasing its Java platform under the GNU GPL. When this license change is completed, we expect that Java will no longer be a trap. Nonetheless, the general issue described here will remain important, because any non-free l... (more)

While we have never released a complete GNU system suitable for production use, a variant of the GNU system is now used by tens of millions of people who mostly are not aware it is such. Free software does not mean "gratis"; it means that users are free to run the program, study ... (more)

[Dee-Ann LeBlanc mused recently here at LinuxWorld.com on the vexed question of whether in the Linux community we are letting politics have too much sway over and above the technology. Here are Richard Stallman's thoughts on that same issue, just received...far from sharing this ... (more)

(LinuxWorld) -- Since Joe Barr's article criticized my dealings with SIGLINUX, I would like to set the record straight about what actually occurred, and state my reasons. When SIGLINUX invited me to speak, it was a "Linux User Group"; that is, a group for users of the GNU/Linux ... (more)