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.
It is more likely I can actually go if you have funds to cover the additional cost, and a speaker's fee would be nice.
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
I will have a trip to Europe in the second week of October and I am looking for invitations for additional talks in the same trip. If you would like to invite me to speak in that trip, please write to me at rms-invitation@gnu.org with "october" as the subject.
It is more likely I can actually go if you have funds to cover the additional cost, and a speaker's fee would be nice.
US citizens: call on state legislators to reject any calls for an Article V convention.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on California Attorney General Rob Bonta to protect journalists covering the LA protests.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter to oppose the Big Bad Bill, which Congress just passed. Here's an AFL-CIO list of how it harms low-income Americans:
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on the CDC to restore funding for vaccine development.
Here's how to make the actionnetwork.org letter campaign linked above work without running the site's nonfree JavaScript code. (See https://gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html for why that issue matters.)
First, make sure you have deactivated JavaScript in your browser or are using the LibreJS plug-in.
I have done the next step for you: I added `?nowrapper=true' to the end of the campaign URL before posting it above. That should bring you to a page that starts with, "Letter campaigns will not work without javascript!"
They indeed won't work without some manual help, but the following simple method seems adequate for many of them, including this one.
To start, fill in the personal information answers in the box on the right side of the page. That's how you say who's sending the letter.
Then click the "START WRITING" button. That will take you to a page that can't function without nonfree JavaScript code. (To ensure it doesn't function perversely by running that nonfree code, you can enable LibreJS or disable JavaScript by visiting that page.) You can finish sending without that code By editing its URL in the browser's address bar, as follows:
First, go to the end and insert `&nowrapper=true'. Then tell the browser to visit that URL. This should give you a version of the page that works without JavaScript. Edit the subject and body of your letter. Finally, click on the "SEND LETTER" button, and you're done.
This method seems to work for letter campaigns that send the letters to a fixed list of recipients, the same recipients for every sender. Editing and revisiting the URL is the only additional step needed to bypass the nonfree JavaScript code. I'm sure you'll agree it is a small effort for the result of supporting the campaign without opening your computer to unjust (and potentially malicious) software.
US citizens: call on the USPS board of governors to retract its nomination of a Fedex board member as head of the USPS.
Here's how to make the actionnetwork.org letter campaign linked above work without running the site's nonfree JavaScript code. (See https://gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html for why that issue matters.)
First, make sure you have deactivated JavaScript in your browser or are using the LibreJS plug-in.
I have done the next step for you: I added `?nowrapper=true' to the end of the campaign URL before posting it above. That should bring you to a page that starts with, "Letter campaigns will not work without javascript!"
They indeed won't work without some manual help, but the following simple method seems adequate for many of them, including this one.
To start, fill in the personal information answers in the box on the right side of the page. That's how you say who's sending the letter.
Then click the "START WRITING" button. That will take you to a page that can't function without nonfree JavaScript code. (To ensure it doesn't function perversely by running that nonfree code, you can enable LibreJS or disable JavaScript by visiting that page.) You can finish sending without that code By editing its URL in the browser's address bar, as follows:
First, go to the end and insert `&nowrapper=true'. Then tell the browser to visit that URL. This should give you a version of the page that works without JavaScript. Edit the subject and body of your letter. Finally, click on the "SEND LETTER" button, and you're done.
This method seems to work for letter campaigns that send the letters to a fixed list of recipients, the same recipients for every sender. Editing and revisiting the URL is the only additional step needed to bypass the nonfree JavaScript code. I'm sure you'll agree it is a small effort for the result of supporting the campaign without opening your computer to unjust (and potentially malicious) software.
US citizens: Tell the Senate to remove the million-dollar deposit requirement for asking for an injunction.
US citizens: Tell the US attorney for NJ to stop prosecuting Rep. McIver.
US citizens: call on the Senate to censure Senator Mike Lee for his contempt towards the assassinated Democrats in Minnesota.
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.
How an intern can do multiple tasks
Melting ice encourages volcanoes underneath to erupt. Oops!
60% of Honeybees in the US died last winter, killed by he varroa mites which spread various diseases among the bees.
*ICC issues warrant for Taliban's supreme leader for persecution of women.*
Hooray! Even though it isn't likely that he will be arrested and brought to the court for trial, this will still have good effects on the world.
The security detail for the prime minister of Sweden ran and rode their bikes to and from work shifts, and allowed a personal surveillance app to track them. This allowed the public to track the prime minister's movements.
I gather that publishing where users run or ride is a documented feature, not a bug or a documented malfeature. If humans were infallible, the fault would be entirely on the guards who used it. But since humans are fallible, the system is at fault also.
Don't be a sap,
Avoid the app!
Just as the bully's followers are attacking anyone that they can describe as antisemitic, the bully himself uttered an indisputably antisemitic slur. Can he be deported for that?
Britain's repression of protest becomes more vicious, as we might expect. 20 protesters face prosecution and perhaps 14 years in prison for carrying signs stating support for the banned "terrorist" organization, Palestine Action.
The declaration that Palestine Action is a terrorist organization declares an absurd (and false) exaggeration to be true. The prosecution of the sign-carriers, if that goes ahead, will use that false "truth" for tyranny, and threaten even more tyranny.
I expect that the judge will forbid any discussion, in the trial, of whether Palestine Action really is terrorist -- to insist that the declaration replaces the truth.
Advice to protesters on how to overcome the magats' usual attacks and build a movement that goes beyond protest.
Although I am not an expert, it seems rational to me.
US citizen and Israeli citizen Eran Zelnik: *I’m a Jewish Israeli in the US standing up for Palestine. By [the fascist leader's] logic, I’m a terror supporter.*
He compares the current US regime in detail to the Nazi regime that his grandparents fled, and then asks Kash Patel (head of the FBI), "Do you want to arrest me?"
NYC's Democratic primary demonstrated the superiority of ranked choice voting.
The EU is investigating whether Google Search's "AI" Overviews are anticompetitive.
* A former FBI agent who allegedly shouted "kill ’em!" at law enforcement during the [109]January 6 insurrection is now advising a "weaponization working group" in the "justice department".
Genetic evidence that air pollution provokes development of lung cancer — and faster aging of telomeres.
Canada is considering a cruel and dangerous immigration and surveillance bill.
The immigration part would permit officials to cancel visas arbitrarily and ban arbitrarily any pathway for people to reach Canada to ask for admission. No appeal is allowed.
Furthermore, people arriving across the border where there is no crossing point would have just two weeks to apply for asylum. What does such harshness serve/
The immigration minister has admitted that all this is a surrender to pressure from the bully.
The surveillance part would make it easier for cops and prosecutors to get access to people's communication metadata without a warrant. It includes an almost unlimited exceptions for emergencies; perhaps it would be acceptable if it stated more concrete limits, or if it prohibited the state from retaining such surveillance data more than 2 weeks if it has not by then obtained a warrant covering that same data.
The EU seems to be abandoning its leadership in curbing greenhouse gas emissions.
Bhutan expelled 100,000 members of an ancestrally Nepali minority group into India, They went to refugee camps in Nepal. Many were later allowed to move to other countries including the US. Some have been deported from the US for various alleged crimes, but the US doesn't check that Bhutan will allow them entry (it does not). So they go to Nepal, but the refugee camp won't let them return, and Nepal does not believe, or does not care, that they formerly lived there.
Now Nepal insists on deporting them to Bhutan, and officials seem unwilling to face the fact that Bhutan won't allow them in.
A court ordered that Ward Sakeik not be deported, and deportation thugs tried to deport her anyway.
*Droughts worldwide pushing [around 100 million people] towards starvation, says report.*
This looks like the beginning of what we know global heating will produce: a permanent inability for some regions to sustain their current populations. To stabilize the population of endangered regions with birth control and abortion is urgent, if we want to prevent megadeaths from doing so.
The article's actual title said "tens of millions", but those words are misleading since the article's text says "more than 90 million". In the absence of a basis to know it is closer to 90 than to 100, the best rough approximation is 100 million.
Many BBC journalists rebuke the BBC for refusing to present the facts that would shed a critical light on Israel's war crimes. For instance, its refusal to show the documentary Gaza: Doctors Under Attack, which it had commissioned, apparently because of the truth that that documentary would demonstrate.
Another pertinent issue:
I am obliged to point out that authorized distribution of BBC video
programs on the internet is wrapped in DRM, which is
an
injustice in
itself.
The article talks about other channels that distributed the documentary in the UK, after the BBC finally rejected it. I suppose that their internet distribution is afflicted with DRM too, meaning no less subjugatory.
I hope you will join me in refusing to use anything that imposes DRM on published works. Let's make DRM a felony!
However, you can find textual explanation of the same facts in https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy0xp969n69o and https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/apr/24/new-details-on-killing-of-paramedics-in-gaza-appear-to-contradict-idf-account
*How Mamdani connects climate policy to his affordability agenda as he runs for New York mayor.*
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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