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Software ‘Saint’ Richard Stallman fights for computing freedom — and against corporate control
Stallman — a legend in the programmer community for more than a quarter century — considers it his life’s work to proselytize the free-software gospel, educating the lay people who’d otherwise assume that Microsoft or Apple are exclusively synonymous with computing.

Twenty minutes into our interview, at the Downtown Crossing headquarters of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), Richard Stallman learns that I own an iPhone.

“That’s a shame,” he says, leaning back in his chair, fixing me with a stern gaze, and fiddling, as he’ll do for much of the next hour and a half, with his beard.

Stallman founded the FSF in 1985, two years after he’d launched the still-ongoing mass-collaboration GNU software project at MIT — which provided the fundamentals for the hugely popular GNU/Linux operating system that’s in millions of computers today. He has no truck with the “iMoan.” Nor with the “iScrod.” And certainly not with “MS-DOG,” as he derisively dubs Microsoft’s MS-DOS operating system.

Such proprietary technology, trussed up with “malicious features” designed “specifically for the restriction of the user,” says Stallman, “impose control to an unusual degree” and represent “forms of subjugation.”

And here you thought you were just checking your e-mail.

But Stallman — a legend in the programmer community for more than a quarter century — considers it his life’s work to proselytize the free-software gospel, educating the lay people who’d otherwise assume that Microsoft or Apple are exclusively synonymous with computing.

“They think it’s natural that the software developers will have power over them,” he says. “My mission is to point out to them that that isn’t natural. It’s wrong. It’s an injustice. And they shouldn’t stand for it.”

Some in the open-source community (a note about semantics anon) have griped that Stallman is a stubborn utopian, whose Manichean worldview and rhetoric are counterproductive to the larger cause.

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