We reach the third part of Stallman's biography. We had left to the founder of the Free Software movement trying to sabotage the new closed and hierarchical culture of the new MIT staff. This campaign was not successful as the new staff hired were not interested in programming.
There are two conflicting stories about what led RMS to launch the free software movement.. In this article we are going to review both.
Third part of Stallman's biography
The first story tells of Stallman becoming angry when he was denied access to the source code for the lab's new printer. Stallman had modified the previous printer so that it sent a message to all users notifying them that the paper had jammed or which document was being printed. Since the printer was on another floor, these modifications were necessary, but it was impossible to make them.
The other version, told by Stallman himself, says that the new authorities of the laboratory decided to abandon the internal development of the software and hire a commercial alternative. lThe erroneous nature of this decision was proven when no one was able to connect the equipment simultaneously to the university's internal network and to the external ARPANET network. Nor was the software provider interested in doing so.
RMS believed that the system's security policy not only did not prevent errors from being made, it also prevented those who could fix them from fixing them. We already told about the failed sabotage attempt in the previous article.
The birth of GNU
These developments and the growing trend to close software code led Stallman to the decision to stop working for the laboratory (although he remained linked to it) and start working on an operating system developed from scratch. This system would be similar to Unix to facilitate the transition for users. GNU is a recursive acronym whose letters are the English initials of GNU It is not Unix.
Even if I planned to create an operating system, I had no intention of doing everything from scratch. Looking for free-to-use tools he asked the developer of the Free University Compilation Kit if he could use it. Since he put the condition that whatever Stallman created with that compiler had to invite people to buy it, RMS decided not to use it. Instead, he built his own compiler based on the free code of the Pastel compiler, and on a text editor that is well known to everyone, Emacs.
Emacs was also based on an editor, but its code was modified to such an extent that when it became proprietary it no longer mattered because almost nothing remained of the original.
The Free Software Foundation
Although the operating system was never available, tools played a fundamental role in the birth of Linux and FreeBSD.
Convinced that writing code was not enough, Stallman decided to give it institutional coverage and in 1985 created the Free Software Foundation. The FSF was born as a non-profit entity with the mission of ensuring that all tools and the future operating system remain free for all who wish to use them.
For this to be possible In 1989, a legal instrument was created, the General Public License (GPL). The GPL is what gives rights to end users (People and organizations) the freedom to study, use, modify and share the software.
In recent years Stallman was not without controversy. One was decidedly idiotic, whether he had the right to use the title of doctor. The other was a mixture of foolishness and economic interest. Some stakeholders used the growing cancel culture to try to change the Free Software Foundation's policies.
I myself criticized it a few weeks ago in another blog. My opinion is that he was not the right person to lead the Free Software Foundation and he should have imitated Linus Torvalds and left the institutional part in other hands. However, I am aware that when no one remembers me and the other critics, people will continue talking about Stallman.