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Recieved a Bachelor's Degree in physics, Magna Cum Laude.
Wikipedia -
Enrolled at MIT to pursue a doctorate in physics, but after a year, decided to focus on programming in the Artificial Intelligence Lab.
A Serious Bio -
Worked on software projects such as TECO and Emacs for the ITS (Incompatible Timesharing System. He also worked on the Lisp machine operating system.
Wikipedia
Developed the first extensible text editor Emacs
A Serious Bio
Developed the AI technique of dependency-directed backtracking, also known as truth maintenance.
A Serious Bio -
When MIT's Lab for Computer Science installed a password control system. RMS developed a way to decrypt the passwords and provided the decrypted passwords with instructions on how to achieve anonymous access to the systems.Wikipedia
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Manufactures stopped distributing source code for their products. Up until this time source code was provided with the product. Hackers could modify the source code to make the machines do the things they wanted them to do. Hackers loved the idea of fixing and/or improving the products and everyone benefited. Wikipedia
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Announced the GNU Project on several ARPANET and USENET mailing lists.
Initial Announcement
Free Software Foundation -
Published the GNU Manifesto in 1985. Part of the text was taken from the initial announcement in 1983 and refined before publishing.
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Created the Free Software Foundation a few months after publishing the GNU Manifesto.Staff and Board
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Stallman co-founded the League for Programming Freedom as a response to "Apple's look and feel lawsuit against Microsoft over a broad class of graphical user interfaces."
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Recieved the Grace Murray Hopper Award from the Association for Computing Machinery. Wikipedia
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Called for the development of a free online encyclopedia called GNUPedia. WikipediaHis idea inspired the creation of Wikipedia, which was more popular.