The photo comes from wikimedia.org
"Richard_Stallman_at_LibrePlanet_2019" by Ruben Rodriguez
The photo comes from
wikimedia.org
"Richard_Stallman_at_LibrePlanet_2019" by Ruben Rodriguez
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This is the personal web site of Richard Stallman.
The views expressed here are my personal views, not those of
the Free Software Foundation or
the GNU Project.
For the sake of separation, this site has always been
hosted elsewhere and managed separately.
If you want to send me GPG-encrypted mail, do not trust key servers! Some of them have phony keys under my name and email address, made by someone else as a trick. See gpg.html for my real key.
Richard Stallman has cancer. Fortunately it is slow-growing and manageable follicular lymphoma. Treatment put it into remission, and he can expect to live many more years. However, he now has to be even more careful not to catch Covid-19.
I urge you to vote in Democratic primaries for the progressive candidate, if there is one. And in the final election I urge you to vote for Democrats, unless a liberal independent had a good chance of winning.
The largest part of the site is the political notes, and they are typically updated every day.
I'm looking for people to![[America Means Civil Liberties / Patriotism Means Protecting
Them / www.aclu.org/safefree ]](flag_set_vectorized.png)
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
Boycott Chevron, in the name of Steven Donziger.
It is exciting that SB 976 turns towards restricting recommendation algorithms. But these options should not be limited to minors — every user should have this choice. (Please do not refer to teenagers as "children"; that feeds the US tendency to treat them like children and retard their development.)
However, I suggest taking a step beyond just choosing to use or not use the platform's addiction system. Recommendation algorithms should be completely separated from platforms!
If you want to use a nontrivial recommendation algorithm, you should be able to choose it yourself and use it anonymously. You could send it the URLs you want it to base its choices on. These might be some of the pages you had visited, and perhaps pages you had not visited.
Then it should send you its recommendations. You could pass all, or just some, or none of those recommendations to the platform to look at them.
AB 1949 is admirable because it gives a small boost to privacy for users of all ages, not only for children. It isn't enough, though — users should also be guaranteed the right and possibility to access through the Tor network and to use aliases. And collection of a user's data by the state should require a warrant against the user.
The door plug that blew out of a Boeing 737 Max 9 airplane was missing four bolts meant to hold it in place. They were missing because Boeing maintenance removed them and did not put them back in again.
Some workers actually made the mistake, but they were working as part of a work system that Boeing management was responsible for setting up and running. That's where the real fault is.
I suggest passing a law to require aircraft manufacturing and repair companies to have a certain fraction of licensed commercial pilots on their boards. Perhaps 66%.
Private equity is gobbling up large parts of the US nursing home business. This puts patients in danger since private equity can amass lots of money, create an oligopoly, and get away with abuses.
The study suggests that "regulation may be needed." I will take a stronger stand and call for firm limits — perhaps even prohibiting private equity combinations from owning home nursing businesses.
I'v also proposed prohibiting private equity from buying up lots of rental housing.
It should be illegal for a store to charge different prices to customers depending on whether they identify themselves and/or hand over demanded personal data.
Here are some quotations that I particularly like.
You can now read the political notes on Mastodon.
Night-Mayor Adams asserted that the Gaza protest in Columbia was booted by "outside agitators". Reporters are skeptical, and Adams won't say who those were.
*Rebuilding homes in Gaza will cost $40bn and take 16 years, UN finds.*
The union of student workers at UCLA will strike against the school administration for using city thugs to crush a Gaza protest.
Rutgers and University of Minnesota reached compromises with protesting students, granting some of their demands, and students picked up their encampments.
If the students want to have an actual influence for peace in Gaza, and more rights for Palestine, they need to keep people thinking about the issue but not as a bitter knock-down confrontation.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
Uniformed thugs let loose on protesters at Emory university went on a violent rampage against students and faculty — a gas-them-beat-them-and-frame-them operation.
The thugs that mauled protesters ought to go to jail. The university presidents that invited them to do that should resign.
(satire) *Columbia University Gives Students Option To Finish Classes From Prison.*
*We think loneliness is in our heads, but its source lies in the ruin of civil society.*
In 2019, I found that the Tech Model Railroad Club (famously associated with early computer hackers) was almost dead. A few years before members had been vigorously developing it. I told Professor Sussman, and he told me that several years before, most incoming MIT freshmen had lost interest in physical hobbies and activities (model railroading being one). We both speculated that widespread use of snoop-phones and antisocial media platforms, which were addictive to social groups, helped to bring that change about.
A decrease in Americans' use of those systems might perhaps expand the space for civil society.
Some of the protesters on behalf of Palestine in Columbia called for burning Tel Aviv and for eliminating Israel.
The references for this are on Ex-Twitter and therefore inaccessible to me. What they said advocated mass killing and ethnic cleansing of Jews in Israel.
This is the same sort of wrong that right-wing Israelis are advocating and doing to Palestinians. But having this on both sides is not a step towards peace. It is not on the path to having both sides treat each other with respect.
Let's not lose sight of where we want to end up.
Biden is the most progressive, most liberal president the US has had since 1980. (I don't recall enough to judge how he compares with Jimmy Carter.) We should show our appreciation for that. On some important issues, he is doing great.
At the same time, on some other important issues he falls far short of what the US and the world needs and what we demand. We get frustrated and infuriated that he doesn't change for the better. One of these issues is ending the bombing and siege of Gaza.
How should we deal with this half-full, half-empty glass? I think we should make sure to keep showing both sides of what we feel.
We need to keep saying, "Yes, more of that," for the issues where Biden does the right thing,p and "Stop this nonsense!" where he does not. To continue pressure on Biden, we need both sides. Sometimes we need both at once: "This is a big advance, but without more, we are still headed for disaster. Tackle the whole problem, fast!"
There are times for saying, "Yes, this measure is something to be proud of, for today." And there are times to say, "Don't make us laugh — that change is inadequate."
The student protests against Biden's inadequate efforts to protect the civilians of Gaza are running into increasing repression. Although not violent, they are calculated to provoke the schools to violence. This tends to make compromise impossible and leave no chance of agreeing on an outcome we would really want: It seems designed to lead to going down fighting, followed by years of hatred, rather than to a change for the better that leads to opportunities to demand further change.
British Columbia has modified its experimental system of decriminalizing some recreational drugs, limiting lawful use to private places.
I oppose prohibition of drugs, but requiring drug use to be in private places is not prohibition. I don't think it will cause the same great harm that prohibition has caused.
*US finds Israeli units committed human rights abuses before Gaza war.*
Because LLMs are not real intelligence, using them as a basis for web search is likely to lead to various bad results.
The article presumes that searching means "Google search", but for me it is just the opposite: I can't access Google search at all. For me, bizarre or inconvenient things that Google does to its search engine are things I won't notice.
So let's not forget that people can use other search engines if they get burned by Google's.
Recent advances against business-supremacy treaties, around the world.
More about business-supremacy treaties.
New Orleans thugs crushed a Gaza protest in a city park, using horrifying violence against participants and against bystanders.
*So the next time you hear Republicans complain about the federal debt and our swelling interest payments on it, remember that: (1) the debt has grown mainly because of Republican tax cuts, (2) those cuts have mostly benefited the rich, (3) the rich are now the major recipients of interest payments on that debt, (4) and those interest payments are crowding out spending on childcare, elder care, affordable housing, better schools, paid family leave, and everything Americans need.*
*Developed countries accused of bowing to lobbyists at plastic pollution talks[:] Campaigners say last-minute compromise plays into the hands of petrostates and industry influences.*
*Big oil privately acknowledged efforts to downplay climate crisis, Senate report finds.*
*Great Barrier Reef's worst bleaching [ever] leaves giant coral graveyard: "It looks as if it has been carpet bombed."*
*G7 agree to end use of unabated coal power plants by 2035.* However, they are failing to take action to reduce oil and gas use fast enough to avoid disaster.
Human activity is increasing the concentration of one PFAS in drinking water by a substantial amount each year. Finding out whether this is causing major damage to humans is a question that will take difficult research, so it will be many years before we know whether we are causing a disaster this way.
The four factors of the apocalypse:
global heating, global hating,
global eating, global mating.
Copy this button (courtesy of R.Siddharth) to express your rejection of Facebook.
Non-oppressive Commercial E-books
Facebook's face recognition demonstrates a threat to everyone's privacy. I therefore ask people not to put photos of me on Facebook; you can do likewise.
Of course, Facebook is bad for many other reasons as well.
I'd like to make a list of countries that do not require a national identity card, and have no plans to adopt one. If you live in or have confirmed knowledge of such a country, please send email to rms at gnu.org.
Here's my list of countries with no national ID cards and no plans for one: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, UK. Australia's previous government tried to institute national ID cards, but the Labor government dropped the plan.
India has mostly finished imposing a national biometric ID number in a grand act of oppression.
Switzerland has national ID cards which are optional, but they or some other government ID card are needed for some purposes.
Iceland doesn't have ID cards as such, but they have ID numbers that citizens are forced to use frequently. For example, the national ID number is often required to rent a video or use a gym.
Denmark issues non-photo ID cards with a "person number", and many services use this card to identify people.
Norway will impose a national biometric ID card.
Ireland - national ID card by stealth.
ACLU: the five dangers of national ID cards.
Wikipedia has a list of identity card policies by country.
Stay away from certain countries because of their bad immigration policies.
Avoid flight connections in these airports because of their treatment of passengers.
People often ask how I manage to continue devoting myself to progressive activism (such as the free software movement) for years without burning out. The best way I can answer is by recommending a book, The Lifelong Activist by Hillary Rettig.
I disagree with the book on one theoretical point in the last part of the book: we shouldn't think of political activism as being marketing and sales, because those terms refer to business, and politics is something much more important than mere business. However, this doesn't diminish the value of the book's practical advice about borrowing techniques from marketing and sales.
Disclosure: I am friends with the author.
Personal Declaration of Richard Stallman and Euclides Mance on Solidarity Economy and Free Software.
I have reposted some of Rick Falkvinge's articles. As posted on his site, you can't see them in a browser without running some nonfree Javascript code which is apparently non-free. These versions show the same text, without the obstacle.
These are my political articles that are not related to the GNU operating system or free software. For GNU-related articles, see the GNU philosophy directory. You can also download copies of my book, Free Software, Free Society, 3rd edition'.
"Those who profess to favor freedom, yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."Frederick Douglass, American Abolitionist, Letter to an associate, 1849
Here are notes about various issues I care about, usually with links to
more information. The current notes are
here. For all previous
notes, see this page.
See this page for information on efforts to maintain links in the political notes.
Political notes about the 2001 G8 summit in Genoa, Italy are being archived on their own page.
Richard Stallman's bio and publicity photos, and other things of interest to the press, have been moved to a separate page.
The Free Software Song, by Richard M. Stallman. You can listen to a performance of the song: Free Software Song performed by Thor Here is a variant of this song called "The Free Firmware Song".
A song parody, Colors of the Lisp, by Jefferson Carpenter.
Earth under attack from planet Koch.
On doxing, and how to spell it.
A Spanish cartoon: La Ruleta
Española. 
Here I am wearing my "power tie".
Wine snobs get their comeuppance.
Here I am struggling to open a bottle of water.
My application to an join Marian Henley's ex-boyfriends list.
My funny poetry and song parodies.
My Puns in English (Little Leaguer, August 2019).
My Puns in Spanish (New pun: Apostasía April 2019)
My Puns in French (New pun: Microsoft à l'école July 2019)
My Puns in Italian (New pun: Quale pesce fa starnutire? New 10/2018)
My Puns in German (New 02/2016)
Linguistic Swifties (Now with: Wintu, Penutian, Cochiti, Taos, and Towa.)
--Saint
IGNUcius-- The Church of Emacs will soon
be officially listed by at least one person as his religion for
census purposes.
There are no godfathers in the Church of Emacs, since there are no gods, but you can be someone's editorfather.
Stallman Does Dallas: "I have to warn you that Texans have been known to have an adverse reaction to my personality…"
The Dalai Lama today announced the official release of Yellow Hat GNU/Linux.
I found a funny song about the Mickey Mouse Copyright Act (officially the Sonny Bono Copyright Act) which extended copyright retroactively by 20 years on works made as early as the 1920s.
If you are a geek and read Spanish, you will love Raulito el Friki, who said "Hello, world!" immediately after he was born. Here's an archive of this now-defunct comic strip.
Sleeping with Stallman at MIT.
ESR's favorite programming language: Objectivist C.
No Kludges in Cluj (June 2014)
Made for You (December 2012) (local copy) Esperanto translation
A science fiction story: Jinnetic Engineering (in Portuguese, Farsi, Spanish, Armenian, Russian, French, and Italian).My book of essays about the philosophy of Software Freedom, is available from the GNU Press.
Avec des chapeaux French song parody.
My radio program of Music from Georgia, originally broadcast on WUOG in Athens, Georgia on Oct 13, 2014.
Quantum Theory and Abortion Rights
A proposal for gender neutrality in Spanish, suitable for both speech and writing.
On Hacking: In June 2000, while visiting Korea, I did a fun hack that clearly illustrates the original and true meaning of the word "hacker".
Predicting the attack on Pearl Harbor
I would like to thank:
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