Richard Stallman

Richard Stallman Richard Stallman is an American free software activist and programmer who launched the GNU Project in 1983 to create a free Unix-like operating system, and founded the Free Software Foundation in 1985. He wrote the GNU General Public License (GPL), which became the most widely used free software license in the world, and authored key tools including the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) and GNU Emacs. His philosophy that software should be free for users to use, study, share, and modify has been profoundly influential on open-source culture and the legal infrastructure of modern software development.