Richard Stallman's Personal Site
If you participate in the commercial ritual of end-of-the-year
presents, please avoid the digital products that would mistreat
the people you give them to.
Send comments/questions about the search engine to: rms at gnu dot org
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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.
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.
It is absurd to think of fracking as a way to make jobs.
Renewable energy supports a lot more jobs than fossil fuels,
while not endangering civilization.
(Cordray would not be quite as good.}
Link Policy
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The largest part of the site is the
political notes, and they
are typically updated every day.
I'm looking for people to…
I am looking for volunteers to browse various sites and show me
items that I ought to see and link to. If you would like to help me
in this way, please write to rms at gnu dot o r g.
-
American Promise (americanpromise.net) is looking for a Boston
area
volunteer to help suggest and implement changes to their web site to
reduce use of DropBox and nonfree JavaScript code. Ideally it would
function properly even with JavaScript disabled.
To volunteer, please write to Johannes
Epke, johannese@americanpromise.net,
and to me at rms at gnu dot org.
- (in India) make and sell buttons that say, "DON'T BE
TRACKED PAY CASH", in English and/or a local
s language, to resist the campaign against
cash. Talk with a local company that makes buttons, buy a
batch of 50 to 500 buttons for a quantity price, then sell
them for 2 or 3 times that price.
- post videos of my talks on audio-video.gnu.org.
- write a recipe for how to connect to the WiFi in a New York
City subway station without running its nonfree Javascript code. The
recipe could include a free Javascript program I could run, or it
could consist of instructions for what I would type into IceCat (our
variant of Firefox). It doesn't have't be super convenient, it just
has to work.
- help
maintain and operate savannah.gnu.org.
- help web sites put free licenses
on their Javascript code.
- write site-specific Firefox extensions
or local scripts to operate specific web sites.
- help webmasters of various sites (not related to me or GNU)
make simple but substantial changes in their web sites —
for instance, to use the GNU Project's recommended terminology.
- experiment to find good ways to attach
fruits to a Grav-mass tree.
Please email rms at the gnu site if you want to volunteer for any
of those activities. For the Grav-mass decorations, please write
if you come up with a good way.
Civil Liberties Minute:
![[America Means Civil Liberties / Patriotism Means Protecting
Them / www.aclu.org/safefree ]](flag_set_vectorized.png)
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.
US citizens: call on your congresscritter to oppose HR 3144; don't
override environmental laws to endanger salmon and the animals that
eat them.
Citizens of Massachusetts: Block the water privatization clause in the
proposed 2018 climate bill.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Dignity for Detained Immigrants Act.
This would eliminate certain forms of mistreatment of immigrants
facing deportation.
I dislike the use of the word "detained" to refer to imprisonment, but I
signed this anyway because I agree with the substance of the bill.
Everyone: call on the Charlotte DA to drop charges against Charlotte protesters
that are being framed.
US citizens: call on your senators to vote to cancel the FCC's elimination
of net neutrality.
US citizens: call on Congress to protect the Tongass national forest.
US citizens: call on Congress to pass the Special Counsel Independence
and Integrity Act.
US citizens: Tell Congress to raise the upper salary limit for
requiring workers get extra pay for overtime.
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 is a threat to wipe out bitcoin, and all cryptocurrencies, using a
strained legal excuse. The threat is to confiscate individual
bitcoins if those specific coins were used previously in some illegal
transaction, or passed through a broker that was later accused of any
sort of crime.
The article describes two alternative plans for choosing who to punish
in this way, but the effect would be the same: to punish ordinary
users of bitcoins effectively at random. Ostensibly it is not random,
but rather based on a criterion that ordinary users couldn't hope to
check, so it's effectively equivalent to punishment at random.
It is fundamentally unjust to subject people to punishment at random.
Constitutions ought to insist that no one can be punished, or legally
discriminated against, or have property seized, based on circumstances
not feasible for them to have recognized and avoided.
-
A global requirement to list the ultimate beneficial owner of
every company would put a big crimp in global corruption.
Even if many small countries do not adopt this requirement, large
countries could effectively make it compulsory by denying the tax
deduction as a business expense for payments to companies whose
ultimate beneficial owner is not registered.
-
We need a law requiring the immigration agency to publish all
its data
about a particular person's interrogation or exclusion, if that person
publicly asks. We must not allow the agency to hide its refusal to
explain itself to the victim behind a facade of concern for the
victim's own privacy.
-
To treat a payment to a foreign company as a tax-deductable
business expense, that company should have to disclose its
true owners, and whatever other information is needed to
prevent tax dodging.
More items where there
ought to be a law.
Quotes
Here are some
quotations that I particularly like.
The four causes 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,
the Philippines.
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.
Mimi and Eunice
The
Mimi and Eunice book by Nina Paley is great.
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 order copies of my
book, 'Free
Software, Free Society, 3rd edition', signed or not signed.
"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.
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".
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
New song (06/2016)
- Si la face ay pale.
My Cartoons
My Puns in English
(The beloved toy soda can, March 2018).
My Puns in Spanish
(New pun: nata
June 2017)
My Puns in French
(New pun: Un artiste fait March 2018)
My Puns in Portuguese
My Puns in Italian (New 09/2014)
My Puns in German (New 02/2016)
Linguistic Swifties
(Now with: Wintu, Penutian, Cochiti, Taos, and Towa.)
What Republicans Believe.
--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.
I don't know who wrote this, but I hope he does not
object to sharing it here.
No Kludges in Cluj (June 2014)
A science fiction story: Jinnetic
Engineering (in
Portuguese,
Farsi,
Spanish,
Armenian,
Russian,
French, and
Italian).
The Right to
Read
Made for You (December 2012)
(local copy)
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.
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
I would like to thank:
- Positive Internet for sponsoring this web site.
-
Pawel Bokota,
Lake Denman,
Mark Eriksen,
Eduardo Freitas,
and Joe P. Lee
for installing new
text.
- Mark Eriksen for providing the new search feature.
- Craig Metrolis for working on making pages valid html.
- John C. Vernaleo for helping to run the 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 (c) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003,
2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013,
2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018
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
