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Richard Stallman's Birth
Richard Stallman was born in New York on March 16th, 1953. -
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Attended Columbia University
During high school, Stallman started attending Saturday School at Columbia University. -
IBM New York Scientific Centre
Stallman's first job was working with IBM New York Scientific Centre -
MIT
Richard Stallman began working as a text editor at MIT. -
Graduated from Harvard
Stallman graduated from Harvard University with a bachelors degree in physics. -
Research Assistant at MIT
In 1977, Richard Stallman began working as a research assistant at MIT. -
Programmer at MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab
Around his first year studying at Harvard, Richard Stallman began working at the MIT AI Lab as a programmer. This is where he began established in the hacker community. -
Refused Access to Code at the AI Lab
In 1980, Stallman had modified the source code for the labs previous printer to ensure communication to all connected devices for any errors the printer had. However, the AI Lab refused access to the source code after installing the Xerox 9700. It was around this time that many manufacturers stopped using source code and began using restrictive, copyright software. This event was what convinced Stallman to allow public access to the software people use and began his desire for creating the GNU. -
GNU Project
In Stallman's free time, he began starting to work on the GNU Project in response to AT&T's UNIX. -
Quitting MIT
RIchard Stallman quit his job at MIT in 1984 to continue working on the GNU project full-time. -
Copyleft
in 1985, Stallman created the Copyleft Movement. -
GNU/Linux Debate
Linus Torvalds used the GNU's development tools to produce the Linux, although Stallman refers to it as the GNU/Linux. In the free software community, this is the most outstanding name controversy in history. He claims that not using GNU in the name of the operating breaks the values that the GNU was built on. -
Development of a free online encyclopedia
Stallman created the GNUPedia, which was eventually replaced by Wikipedia, which was one of the first ever free online encyclopedia's that allowed users to publicly contribute to articles. -
Surveillance Resistance
After Edward Snowden leaked the PRISM scandal in 2013, Stallman has been open about his resistance to digital surveillance. He is a strong advocate for user privacy and does not use a cell phone, key entry or any other types of location tracking device and uses the TOR browser, which creates anonymous IP addresses for users, whenever using the internet. He also boycotted Sony around this time due to the BMG copy protection rootkit scandal.
