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
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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.
It will be at:
Sapienza University of Rome
Aula Magna of the Rectorate
Piazzale Aldo Moro, 5
Registration: https://www.di.uniroma1.it/it/distinguished-lectures
The address is Batterigatan #2, Göteborg.
Admission is gratis. To register, send email to bahnhofbunker@bahnhof.net or visit bahnhofbunker.se/rsvp.html. The hosts say that the list will not be given to the state.
It will run 14:00 to 16:00 in Haaga-Helia University in Pasila. Specifically, Ratapihantie 13 Helsinki, in the auditorium on the ground floor.
Admission is gratis and there is no need to register, but you may wish to register to reserve a seat. You can do that through reservations.
US citizens: oppose the "Show-Your-Papers" voter suppression rule.
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 your senators to compel FCC Chair Carr to testify now about using the FCC's regulatory power for partisan censorship.
See the instructions for how to sign this letter campaign without running any nonfree JavaScript code--not trivial, but not hard.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on the Washington Post to rehire the columnist who criticized Kirk.
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.
The giant corporation Sysco dominates the food distribution business in the US, and is using this to mistreat truckers and restaurants.
Its success has driven many US restaurants to buy food of lower quality.
I don't see a reason to distinguish between "organic growth" and mergers as paths to over-concentration. Paying attention to that is based on trying to judge over-concentration as "fair" or "unfair", but that judgment is a distraction from the crucial point: over-concentration is very harmful.
We should prevent and eliminate over-concentration in business regardless of how it is or might be created, with the exception of natural monopolies, and those we should restrain by strict regulation.
*High youth death rates [from Alcohol, suicide and injuries] are an "emerging crisis", global health study warns.*
People are learning not to trust the output of bullshit generators. But they need to organize to pressure or require companies to stop pushing bullshit generators on them. Companies including Google and United Airlines have done this.
Starmer Labour is showing off how it abandons environmental protection to smooth the way for all sorts of construction projects.
Musicians are starting to organize boycott of Spotify, mainly about how it doesn't pay most musicians. But they don't seem to recognize the injustice Spotify does to every listener: such as making them identify themselves (by payment systems) and imposing DRM.
I won't submit to those injustices, so I have never used Spotify and never will.
Out, Out Damned Spotify!
The persecutor has a plan to make sure some US student loans can never be forgiven.
Israel demanded that captive Australians who tried to bring desperately needed aid to Gaza sign a sort of confession or they might be imprisoned forever.
This is not as bad as what Israel does to the people of Gaza, but it is despicable. And no one should assign any significance to these confessions when prisoners do sign them.
Prisoners in Alabama, when interviewed for a documentary, supported the official story while they were being filmed. But when not on camera, they told of horrible cruelty.
*Scientists warn US will lose a generation of talent because of [the saboteur in chief's budget] cuts.*
Scientists usually have, within some ranger of issues, a commitment to truth and integrity. The saboteur in chief would rather not inculcate that into young people.
Biologists are advancing fairly fast towards being able to make egg or sperm cells from anyone's tissue. Any two people, of whatever sex and age, could make a fertilized ovum that could potentially develop into a baby.
If one of the parents is female and has a functioning womb, perse could carry the baby. (However, most of those couples would not need this technology to have a baby.) Otherwise, the conceptus would need a surrogate mother if it is to develop.
Those who imagine that these techniques could "reverse population decline" are perhaps not thinking about where so many surrogate mothers would come from. I don't think millions of women would volunteer for this; most who want to bear a baby will prefer to be its genetic mother too. So i fear they would be pressured or coerced into it — for instance, "We will give you permanent residence here if you act as a surrogate mother for the baby of two citizens." Or perhaps people will sentenced to do this. Would right-wing extremist hesitate?
But the idea that we should increase the birth rate is the result of foolish short-termist thinking. A larger population at the time when climate disaster really takes off will probably lead to a more abrupt and deeper disaster, which would leave fewer survivors later, therefore probably with less technology and less remnants of civilization.
Holloman lake in New Mexico has the highest known concentration of PFAS. People hunt ducks there, but they are not safe to eat.
On the mysterious fatal accidents of Tesla cars, which the company releases little data about.
A project to plant over 800,000 trees along a new road in England failed drastically. It is not clear why, but it is clear that the project was done carelessly.
I have to wonder whether the contractor responsible was made to pay damages for this failure. I suspect the answer is no, and that is enough to explain why the project failed, though not in detail.
*"Cruelest forms of torture": freed Palestinians describe horrors of Israeli jail.*
Federal thugs violently arrested TV reporter Debbie Brockman as she was walking to a bus stop, and accused her of throwing things at them.
Apparently she had not actually done that, because they filed no charges.
The greedy privatized UK water companies want the state to charge the public to build unnatural walled reservoirs and give them as a gift to those water companies.
The UK should nationalize those companies, not build assets to inflate their valuation. If indeed those reservoirs need building, the state should own them, and drown the water companies in them.
The wrecker said that Illinois Governor Pritzker should be jailed for "not protecting" deportation thugs.
They are masked and armed, and hardly in danger. The people who need protection are their victims.
That's an instance of the wrecker's usual absurd extreme double-standard premise. He goes beyond denying the truth, by proclaiming an extreme opposite of it. This will fool the people who try to find the truth by looking for the two extremes and taking the average.
The deportation thugs are not merely failing to protect the people who encounter them (including unauthorized immigrants, authorized immigrants, and US citizens), some of them are cruelly attacking innocent people.
*Sierra Club Blasts Report of "Concierge, White Glove Service” for Fossil Fuel Companies.*
That fits with everything the saboteur in chief is saying and doing for them.
A new scheme to borrow money to pay medical bills will make it easy for poor Americans the transition from Medicaid (which Republicans have cut) to unpayable medical debt whose interest will drain them constantly.
Concert tickets have exploded in price for the last few decades. It is a disaster for music.
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:
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