Recently I have chance to attend Richard Stallman talk on Free software at NUS Singapore. RSM is modern age Prophet of Free Software. He convinced University of Berkeley to release souce of BSD Operating system for world.
Though his views are widely available on internet in his numerous articles - and talk was repeatability of same words, I was more interested to see him in person.
He is St iGNUcious ( stallman.org/saint.html ) of GNU and advocate :
- Free software for social benefit.
- Free Software and GNU as preferred terms over Open Source software.
- Use term GNU/Linux for Linux distributions because it has 28% GNU software.
- 'Blob free' Free software even if it does not provide some essential feature e.g. remove Linux blobs code from kernel that will stop support of some devices (i.e. NVIDIA Video card, some NICs, Storage controller etc). One such distribution made available by GNU is Linux-libre.
What is RSM software definition ?
Freedom-0: Freedom to run program for any purpose
Freedom-1: Freedom to study code and change it as per your wish
Freedom-2: Freedom to redistribute other software to anyone
Freedom-3: Freedom to distribute your modified software to anyone
In 1983 he announced GNU project and in 1985 Free Software foundation. Linux kernel was announced many years later in 1991 under GNU License.
World is indebted for his contribution.
