Richard Stallman's Personal Site
The photo comes from
wikimedia.org
"Richard_Stallman_at_LibrePlanet_2019" by Ruben Rodriguez
Send comments/questions about the search engine to: rms at gnu dot org
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.
We are currently publicizing many kinds of
ongoing protests,
making this information available while
following our moral commitment
not to direct the public to run nonfree software.
RSS site feed for the most recent
political notes and new material.
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
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.
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
- learn how to HTML-craft and remotely-install political notes
- send me examples of how proprietary programs have been designed to be addictive.
- check a few sites for me regularly
and show me any new articles that I would like to see or link to.
- help me in maintaining stallman.org by
occasionally looking for articles on a given point in the news.
- send me examples of how proprietary programs have been
designed to cause programmed obsolescence of products.
- write
site-specific Firefox extensions
or local scripts to operate specific web sites.
- help
maintain and operate savannah.gnu.org.
- experiment to find good ways to attach
fruits to a Grav-mass tree.
- help web sites put free licenses
on their Javascript code.
If you would like to help me in any of these ways, please write to rms at gnu dot o r g.
Civil Liberties Minute
[ no upcoming talks. ]
-
US citizens: call on the DHS to restore refugees' opportunity to defend themselves.
Here's the message I sent.
Stop creating opportunities to rush to ruin refugees' lives.
In common decency, the DHS must withdraw this interim final rule and
restore the 30-day period for refugees to respond to a Notice of
Intent to Terminate (NOIT) under 8 CFR 207.9. And give them all the
reasonable chance to make their cases.
Your new rule is a blatant attempt to rig the process, to make it
unfair. Any fair-minded person, anyone who values justice, can see
that at a glance. This will bring dishonor on my country -- so, in
the name of decency and patriotism, I call on you to cease and desist.
Sincerely,
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign
without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
-
US citizens: call on Congress to investigate LICE's arrests of children.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the
main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
-
US citizens: call on Congress to pass a constitutional amendment to
allow regulation of spending on political campaigns.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign
without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Join with this campaign to address this issue.
To phone your congresscritter about this, the
main switchboard is +1-202-224-3121.
Please spread the word.
-
If Democrats (some progressive, but many plutocratist) take control of
Congress for 2027 in today's election, that will be a preliminary
victory. Magat officials already in place will continue to pervert
justice, human rights, and democracy in the US.
If Democrats are to protect the country they will need to fight to do it.
-
US citizens: call on state attorneys general to investigate Zillow.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign
without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
-
US citizens: Support the lawsuit to keep LICE away from polling places.
-
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.
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.
-
* 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 regulation of toxic chemicals in the US is hamstrung by laws that
enable companies to keep their use and their presence in any place
secret.
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.
-
*China-owned British Steel said to have requested £600m of taxpayer
support.*
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.
More items where there
ought to be a law.
Quotes
Here are some
quotations that I particularly like.
(
RSS Feed)
You can now read the political notes on
Mastodon.
-
A group of UK parliamentarians acknowledge that the Sizewell C nuclear
power plant would be a terrible deal for the taxpayers.
Nuclear power tends to be a bad deal, because it is more expensive and
takes far longer than renewable generation.
That being so, it provokes suspicion that the government has some
hidden reasons for pushing the nuclear plan.
-
*"No human at the helm": Delaware plan would let AI agents run entire businesses.*
If the agents direct the business to commit crimes, no one could be
punished. Could the shareholders profit from that outcome? It is
crucial to ensure that no one who has control can gain from that.
-
What has made French student protests so powerful?
-
The muskrat's new datacenter, built in a city in Mississippi, has
turbine generators that sound as loud as jet engines. One neighbor is
suing and asking others to join.
The muskrat has offered to buy the houses in the area for market
value, but that is unfair given the trouble that moving would involve.
To be a decent man, he should offer twice the market value for each
house — he can afford it.
-
Warning that the current Ebola outbreak, the broadest ever, could
spread to countries outside Africa.
Rich countries that have not given money to get the outbreak under
control for Africans' sake must now help fund getting the outbreak
under control so as to protect their own populations.
-
Some economics departments continue to teach the system of discounting
future profits and future disasters, which leads to systematically
understating the impact of climate disaster when it happens.
-
How [the wrecker] Destroyed South Africa’s Effort to Slow HIV Transmission.
Modern drugs can stop the transmission of HIV, turning it into a
harmless, slowly disappearing relic — as long as people can still get
their drugs.
-
We should teach everyone how artificial charisma works, so they can learn to
resist it.
-
George Mason tried to warn Americans in 1787 that giving presidents unlimited
power to pardon was an invitation to corruption.
The general respect for rule of law made it unacceptable for presidents to
abuse this before, but the corrupter has made it acceptable to those
inclined towards corruption.
-
US cops are using machine learning systems to identify "suspicious"
routes of travel, then inventing false pretexts to
stop and search drivers who have been observed following such a route.
This practice involves a lie every time, but thugs don't mind lying to
get what they want. (Perhaps that is why they support the
bullshitter.)
-
The UK government has blocked activist Andreas Malm, a Swede, from
visiting the UK to speak on a panel about Palestine.
It presented uselessly vague reason for doing so.
-
Macron plans to penalize protesters for damage to property which occurs
near their protests — a policy demanded by the right-wing extremist party.
-
Experts are starting to question the validity of the concept of a single
very broad "autistic spectrum".
I never adopted that concept: I distinguish between Asperger's and
autism. I am not wedded to that terminology, though.
-
A local truce between Ukraine and the Putin forces permitted people
who had left Oleshky to go to Ukraine.
-
The Environmental Defense Fund reports that the saboteur in chief
*boosted half of US coal plants with taxpayer dollars and "free passes
to pollute".*
-
The difference between progressive Democrats and plutocratist Democrats
is visible in the stance of California Democratic politicians regarding
the ballot initiative to tax billionaires' wealth.
Someone should post, in a special web page, the position on that
initiative of each Democratic politician in or of California. Then in
future years voters will be able reject them in Democratic primaries.
-
(satire) *Palantir Acquires Pentagon For $800 Billion.*
-
(satire) *Supreme Court Upholds Temporal Gerrymander That Would Cost
Democrats 1932 Election.*
-
Deportation thugs are using their cars as weapons to injure or kill
people that they have suspicions about.
Afterward, they often lie to put the blame on the victim.
-
Greenpeace protected a substantial part of the North Sea from bottom
trawling by dropping boulders there.
The four factors of the apocalypse:
global heating, global hating,
global eating, global mating.
[More Cartoons]
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.
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.
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."
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.
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".
Earth under attack from planet Koch.
On doxing, and how to spell it.
Futon Physics
A Spanish cartoon: La Ruleta
Española. 
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.
A song parody, Colors of the Lisp, by Jefferson Carpenter.
The text to a filk
song,
Johnny v. N.,
by Paul Rubin.
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.)
--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
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
My book of essays about the philosophy of Software Freedom,
is available from the
GNU Press.
Love and Dance
My Childhood Sweetheart
Made for You
My Former Personal Ad
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
I would like to thank:
- Positive Internet for hosting this web site.
- Graziano Sorbaioli for improving the layout of the main
page.
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
