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Richard Stallman born
New York (Stallman) -
Begins working at MIT
Stallman, a freshman at Harvard, begins to work at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab. (Stallman) -
Graduates from Harvard
Stallman earns a bachelor's degree in physics (Hosch). -
Develops truth maintenance (AI research)
The AI technique was originally referred to as dependency-directed backtracking (Stallman). -
Finishes developing Emacs
Stallman describes Emacs as "the first extensible text editor" in his online autobiography (Stallman). -
Leaves MIT
Stallman leaves MIT, purportedly over changes to the university copyright policies (Holsh); he later claims he left to work on the GNU project (Stallman). -
Begins work on GNU
Stallman starts working on a free alternative to UNIX. He names it GNU, a recursive acronym that stands for "GNU is Not UNIX" (Holsh) -
Forms Free Software Foundation
The nonprofit's initial goals are to support the GNU project and sell the EMACS software (Gross). -
GNU General Public License first released
The GPL, written by Stallman and his lawyers, is the first license to implement the concept of copyleft (Free Software Foundation). -
Recieves the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship
The MacArthur, sometimes called the "genius award," provides money for Stallman to continue his work on the GNU project (Holsh). -
Recieves appointment at MIT
Stallman returns to MIT in a Visiting Scientist role, thanks largely to his work on GNU (Stallman). -
GPL 2.0 released
The second GNU General Public License explicitly disavows violating the license to resolve a patent infringement (Free Software Foundation). -
GNU/Linux emerges
The GNU system utilities and Linus Torvalds's kernel are first combined to form the operating system now commonly called Linux or GNU/Linux (Holsch). -
Advocates for a free and open encyclopedia
His efforts are merged into the project that eventually becomes Wikipedia (Holsh), which Stallman later claims partial credit for inspiring (Stallman). -
GPL 3.0 released
The GNU General Public License Version 3 is a major rewrite of the famous copyleft license, and is the most current version (Free Software Foundation). -
Resigns from MIT
Amid pressure over his comments about Jeffrey Epstein and pedophilia, Stallman steps down from his MIT post (Romo).
