Sneak back to the office to code in the middle of the night? Programmers who fight for free software

Richard MatthewStallman was a brilliant programmer who developed Emacs and later GNU Emacs, the GNU C compiler, and the GNU debugger.

He proposed the concept of “free software” and created and perfected the internal logic of the open source society of computers.

Develop a programmer’s favorite code editor

Born in Manhattan in 1953, Stallman entered Harvard University in 1971 and worked as a professional hacker at the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

During his time at MIT, Stallman developed many of the most influential pieces of software in the industry, most notably Emacs. Emacs is an editing software similar to the office software we use today.

It is not only an editor, but also an integrated development environment, which includes functions such as sending and receiving email, editing remote files via FTP/TRAMP, logging in to hosts via Telnet, logging in to IRC to communicate with friends, and checking calendars.

It also supports editing for multiple programming languages, debugging programs, combining GDB, EDebug, playing games, calculators, journaling, making coffee, managing schedules, and more.

Emacs is widely recognized as one of the most popular code editors for professional programmers.

Stallman started the GNU project in January 1984. He first made a UNIx-compatible operating system.

It is easy to port, and Unix users can easily transfer to it. Stallman named the system GNU.

The first software Stallman decided to write for GNU was a multilingual, multiplatform compiler. He first tried to make use of the source code for the Pastel compiler, but gave up soon after trying. Stallman eventually wrote a new Compiler GCC(the GNU Compiler Collection) from scratch.

In early 1985, Stallman expanded on the original Emacs and developed a word processor, GNU Emacs, for text editing on Unix systems. He then put it on an anonymous server on an MIT computer.

Stallman was worried that MIT would claim ownership of the product and impose conditions of sale on it so that his product would become proprietary software again, so he quit MIT.

After quitting his job, Stallman struggled to afford a computer, and soon realized that his old office at the A.I. lab wasn’t available to anyone else, so he snuck back to the office every night to write code when it was empty.

Since the Internet was not yet widespread, it was difficult to copy the new software via FTP, and Stallman, who was unemployed, needed income to make ends meet.

Stallman announced that anyone could get the code for the entire program for $150. This cost was much lower than the price of proprietary software at the time, and users could get the source code of the software. In this way, the free software distribution business model was born and is still used today.

Since GNU makes the source code public, the “Copyleft” prevents profit-seeking manufacturers from taking advantage of free software and making it proprietary. Stallman came up with a Copyleft license that made all GNU programs subject to a “Copyleft” principle: they could be copied, modified, or sold, but all improvements and modifications to the source code had to be made available to all users. Copyleft guarantees the sustainability of free software distribution.

The success of the GNU project inspired many young hackers to write large amounts of free software.

In 1991, Linus Torvalds, the “father of Linux”, wrote a Unix-like operating system kernel called Linux, which connected all the GNU software and hardware, but Linux did not represent the entire operating system. Linux was just a kernel. The entire system also contains numerous software tools and utilities written by GNU hackers, mostly by GNU hackers.

The entire operating system is appropriately called GNU/Linux. The Linux kernel brings the GNU project to a close.

Start the Free Software Foundation

In October 1985, stallman founded the FreeSoftware Foundation (FSF), dedicated to promoting FreeSoftware and promoting freedom for computer users.

Inspired by the popularity of the Apache Web server and the GNU/Linux operating system, a new generation of hackers is joining more and more people in free software.

Since 1994, Stallman has visited China several times. These visits were neither official invitations nor business activities, but spontaneous acts of Chinese followers of his free software ideas. He comes to China mostly to give lectures at universities to spread his “free software” message to Chinese students, but these lectures are free.

In 1991 Stallman wore long, sloppy curly hair like instant noodles, a full beard and casual clothes

Stallman has also received honors from institutions and universities around the world:

MacArthur Fellowship 1990; The Grace Hopper Award from the Association for Computing Machinery;

In 1996, he was awarded honorary doctorate degree of Royal Swedish Institute of Technology.

Electronic Frontier Foundation Pioneer Award 1998;

1999 Yuri Rubinsky Memorial Award;

2001 Takeda Research Award;

He was elected member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2002.

In 2003, he received honorary doctorate degree from the University of Brussels.

In 2004, he was awarded honorary doctorate degree from Salta National University, Argentina.

In 2007, he was awarded honorary Professor of Inca University, Peru.

He was awarded an honorary doctorate degree from the University of Pavia in 2007.