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Birth of Richard Stallman
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Hired at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab
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Graduate School
Enrolled at MIT to pursue a doctorate in physics, but after a year, decided to focus on programming in the Artificial Intelligence Lab.
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At the MIT AI Lab
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.
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Password Control
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 -
Hacking a printer
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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The GNU Project
Announced the GNU Project on several ARPANET and USENET mailing lists.
Initial Announcement
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The GNU Manifesto
Published the GNU Manifesto in 1985. Part of the text was taken from the initial announcement in 1983 and refined before publishing. -
The Free Software Foundation
Created the Free Software Foundation a few months after publishing the GNU Manifesto.Staff and Board -
League for Programming Freedom
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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Grace Murray Hopper Award
Recieved the Grace Murray Hopper Award from the Association for Computing Machinery. Wikipedia -
Encyclopedia
Called for the development of a free online encyclopedia called GNUPedia. WikipediaHis idea inspired the creation of Wikipedia, which was more popular.
