The photo comes from wikimedia.org
"Richard_Stallman_at_LibrePlanet_2019" by Ruben Rodriguez
The photo comes from
wikimedia.org
"Richard_Stallman_at_LibrePlanet_2019" by Ruben Rodriguez
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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.
I am thinking of making another trip to Europe during February - April. If you would like to invite me to speak during that trip, please write to me at rms-invitation@gnu.org with "feb-apr" as the subject.
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.
The largest part of the site is the political notes, and they are typically updated every day.
I'm looking for people to
US citizens: call on Verizon to stop supporting the Department of Hatred and Suffering and the deportation thugs.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Tell Apple & Google CEOs: End your contracts with the deportation thugs. Also call on them to allow people to freely share and install libre apps.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Tell Amazon to end contracts with deportation thugs.
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 Target's New CEO to help protect Minnesota from deportation thugs.
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 block US military intervention against Iran.
I can imagine a specific manner of military intervention against Iran's murderous repression. This intervention would target the bases of repression forces, such as Basij, and the court buildings used to try protesters (but not when protesters or their families and lawyers would be present).
But I don't think the bully would choose to do that. He doesn't care about Iranian protesters, or any Iranians except perhaps oil billionaires seeking to give him fealty. Practically speaking, if he orders an attack it will be designed to achieve his selfish and imperialistic aims.
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 certain CEOs to end their collaboration with the US deportation thugs.
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 restrict deportation thugs from jailing children or doing anything in or near public schools.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
In my letter I said this should apply to private schools too.
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 your congresscritter and senators to pass the Billionaires' Income Tax.
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 your congresscritter and senators to insist on taking back the extra money granted to deportation thugs by the Big Bad Bill, and explicitly prohibit various unjust and cruel practices.
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.
US citizens: ask your congresscritter and senators to investigate the attempt to undermine our elections by giving private Social Security data to election deniers.
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 mainstream press outlets to report accurately and plainly on Republican plans and promises — quoting them directly, explaining their real-world impacts, and not softening extremist agendas in the name of "balance".
I have seen a report that Adobe Acrobat is pressuring users to upload their own documents to Adobe's Pretend Intelligence summarization tool. But I don't have a source to cite. Can anyone send a report I can refer to?
US citizens: support passage of the Illinois Human Rights Advocacy Protection Act, which would repeal the specific prohibition on boycotting business with Israel.
Americans should be free to boycott any country.
US citizens: call on Congress to investigate the corruptor's own corruption.
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 the SEC and other federal regulators to crack down on white-collar financial crime and enforce the law without fear or favor.
That will take courage — the corrupter wants laws enforced with thorough personal favor.
US citizens: support the newspaper editors that are recognizing the perversion and corruption of the wrecker.
US citizens: Tell the Media: Report on what is really happening in Gaza (bombardment and siege) and the West Bank (violent expulsions).
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
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.
* 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 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.
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.
Here are some quotations that I particularly like.
You can now read the political notes on Mastodon.
US citizens: call on Verizon to stop supporting the Department of Hatred and Suffering and the deportation thugs.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Tell Apple & Google CEOs: End your contracts with the deportation thugs. Also call on them to allow people to freely share and install libre apps.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
US citizens: Tell Amazon to end contracts with deportation thugs.
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 Target's New CEO to help protect Minnesota from deportation thugs.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
* As much as half of some British beaches' coarse sediments consist of human-made materials such as brick, concrete, glass and industrial waste, a study has found. Climate breakdown, which has caused more frequent and destructive coastal storms, has led to an increase in these substances on beaches.*
This doesn't imply that those substance do specific harm when present in a beach, but they demonstrate the magnitude of change that humans are already causing in this early stage of climate breakdown.
(satire) *ICE Agent Scores Easy Win By Deporting Own Family.*
*New "hate speech" rules for NSW schools could stifle classroom discussions about Gaza, teachers warn.*
Punishing "hate speech" as a crime generally tends to lead to repression.
*Environmentalists decry "crushingly disappointing" PFAS action plan for UK.*
This weakness was predictable, because Starmer Labour's first priority is catering to business.
*Cars sold in China will now be required to have a mechanical release on both the inside and outside of every door except the [trunk].*
That exception is disturbing. I had heard, years ago, that cars were designed so that a person inside the trunk could open the door of the trunk. It seems a shame to retreat from that safety measure.
Contacts with Epstein pulled the plug on the career of Peter Mandelson, a Labour MP and minister who worked unceasingly to strengthen the power of business — and not only in Britain.
*Music and dancing signify defiance at celebratory funerals of Iran's protesters.*
*Sanders Secures Vote on His Amendment to Cut $75 Billion in [deportation thug] Funding and Redirect Those Funds to Medicaid.*
This would undo one of the disastrous things in the Big Bad Bill.
FLOCK "security" license plate readers installed by California towns were being accessed secretly by federal agents who were surely up to no good.
Amazon as an example of enshittification: mistreating customers and manufacturers in many different ways, explained in this article.
Do you feel disgusted with Amazon, but yield because "boycotting Amazon is impossible"? I find it possible! I have never ordered anything from Amazon, and I don't find it hard to continue refusing. If a product I want is sold only by Amazon, I look for a substitute.
As a separate matter, I never order any product remotely, not directly. Instead I ask a friend to order it — not from Amazon! — and reimburse my friend before or after. That way, no data is collected about me.
Indeed, when someone wants to buy a present for me, I ask per to "Please not get anything for me from Amazon. Not anything, ever!"
Amazon is not the only company to engage in the injustice of DRM — Digital Restrictions Management.
The practice of DRM is vicious no matter who does it. I boycott all media that have DRM. What I say about Netflix and Spotify goes for Amazon too.
I detest DRM so much that I refuse to listen or watch someone else's DRM's copy using per own DRM-supporting media player, because that would be surrendering to DRM. The only morally legitimate copy of such a work is an unauthorized copy.
Robert Reich: Congress should write into the law to fund the deportation thug agency an explicit requirement that failure to obey any court order will immediately terminate all funding for it.
Last fall the Israeli army bulldozed graves in a war cemetery in which were buried Allied soldiers who died in World War I and II. Some people are shocked.
You'd think that some people are more concerned about symbolic insult to deceased Australians than about the killing of living Palestinians.
Illinois has established a connection with WHO, to coordinate with global response to diseases.
This is necessary because the saboteur in chief has blocked the US government from doing this job.
*Trump suggests Republicans should "take over" elections to protect the [Republican] party* from losing elections.
Discussing the possibility and danger of artificial species of life, being created and released.
It should be noted that AlphaFold2 is not perfect. It can predict the three-dimesional shape of of most amino-acid chains, but there is a substantial fraction that it gets wrong.
Nonetheless, it does a better job of this than any other known system, including a human being, so I think it qualifies as "intelligence".
The four factors of the apocalypse:
global heating, global hating,
global eating, global mating.
Copy this button (courtesy of R.Siddharth) to express your rejection of Facebook.
Non-oppressive Commercial E-books
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.
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.
Stay away from certain countries because of their bad immigration policies.
Avoid flight connections in these airports because of their treatment of passengers.
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.
Personal Declaration of Richard Stallman and Euclides Mance on Solidarity Economy and Free Software.
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."Frederick Douglass, American Abolitionist, Letter to an associate, 1849
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.
Richard Stallman's bio and publicity photos, and other things of interest to the press, have been moved to a separate page.
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.
A Spanish cartoon: La Ruleta
Española. 
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 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 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.
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.
ESR's favorite programming language: Objectivist C.
No Kludges in Cluj (June 2014)
Made for You (December 2012) (local copy) Esperanto translation
A science fiction story: Jinnetic Engineering (in Portuguese, Farsi, Spanish, Armenian, Russian, French, and Italian).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.
Quantum Theory and Abortion Rights
A proposal for gender neutrality in Spanish, suitable for both speech and writing.
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".
Predicting the attack on Pearl Harbor
I would like to thank:
Please send comments on these web pages to rms at gnu period org.
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