Richard Stallman Quotes

The paradigm of competition is a race: by rewarding the winner, we encourage everyone to run faster. When capitalism really works this way, it does a good job; but its defenders are wrong in assuming it always works this way.

- Richard Stallman

I suppose many people will continue moving towards careless computing, because there's a sucker born every minute.

- Richard Stallman

The idea of free software is that users of computing deserve freedom. They deserve in particular to have control over their computing. And proprietary software does not allow users to have control of their computing.

- Richard Stallman

Facebook is not your friend, it is a surveillance engine.

- Richard Stallman

Facebook mistreats its users. Facebook is not your friend; it is a surveillance engine. For instance, if you browse the Web and you see a 'like' button in some page or some other site that has been displayed from Facebook. Therefore, Facebook knows that your machine visited that page.

- Richard Stallman

Proprietary software keeps users divided and helpless. Divided because each user is forbidden to redistribute it to others, and helpless because the users can't change it since they don't have the source code. They can't study what it really does. So the proprietary program is a system of unjust power.

- Richard Stallman

If programmers deserve to be rewarded for creating innovative programs, by the same token they deserve to be punished if they restrict the use of these programs.

- Richard Stallman

With paper printed books, you have certain freedoms. You can acquire the book anonymously by paying cash, which is the way I always buy books. I never use a credit card. I don't identify to any database when I buy books. Amazon takes away that freedom.

- Richard Stallman

Proprietary software is an injustice.

- Richard Stallman

If you use a proprietary program or somebody else's web server, you're defenceless. You're putty in the hands of whoever developed that software.

- Richard Stallman

Proprietary software tends to have malicious features. The point is with a proprietary program, when the users don't have the source code, we can never tell. So you must consider every proprietary program as potential malware.

- Richard Stallman

One reason you should not use web applications to do your computing is that you lose control. It's just as bad as using a proprietary program. Do your own computing on your own computer with your copy of a freedom-respecting program. If you use a proprietary program or somebody else's web server, you're defenceless.

- Richard Stallman

In practice, the copyright system does a bad job of supporting authors, aside from the most popular ones. Other authors' principal interest is to be better known, so sharing their work benefits them as well as readers.

- Richard Stallman

If there is a Like button in a page, Facebook knows who visited that page. And it can get IP address of the computer visiting the page even if the person is not a Facebook user.

- Richard Stallman

In the US, you even lose legal rights if you store your data in a company's machines instead of your own. The police need to present you with a search warrant to get your data from you; but if they are stored in a company's server, the police can get it without showing you anything.

- Richard Stallman

In the U.S., you even lose legal rights if you store your data in a company's machines instead of your own. The police need to present you with a search warrant to get your data from you; but if they are stored in a company's server, the police can get it without showing you anything. They may not even have to give the company a search warrant.

- Richard Stallman

Free software is software that respects your freedom and the social solidarity of your community. So it's free as in freedom.

- Richard Stallman

In the free/libre software movement, we develop software that respects users' freedom, so we and you can escape from software that doesn't.

- Richard Stallman

Anything that prevents you from being friendly, a good neighbour, is a terror tactic.

- Richard Stallman

The idea of copyright did not exist in ancient times, when authors frequently copied other authors at length in works of non-fiction. This practice was useful, and is the only way many authors' works have survived even in part.

- Richard Stallman

Facebook collects a lot of data from people and admits it. And it also collects data which isn't admitted. And Google does too. As for Microsoft, I don't know. But I do know that Windows has features that send data about the user.

- Richard Stallman

Many users of the GNU/Linux system will not have heard the ideas of free software. They will not be aware that we have ideas, that a system exists because of ethical ideals, which were omitted from ideas associated with the term 'open source.'

- Richard Stallman

In essence, Chrome OS is the GNU/Linux operating system. However, it is delivered without the usual applications, and rigged up to impede and discourage installing applications.

- Richard Stallman

Android is very different from the GNU/Linux operating system because it contains very little of GNU. Indeed, just about the only component in common between Android and GNU/Linux is Linux, the kernel.

- Richard Stallman

In essence, Chrome OS is the GNU/Linux operating system. However, it is delivered without the usual applications, and rigged up to impede and discourage installing applications. I'd say the problem is in the nature of the job ChromeOS is designed to do.

- Richard Stallman

All governments should be pressured to correct their abuses of human rights.

- Richard Stallman

CD stores have the disadvantage of an expensive inventory, but digital bookshops would need no such thing: they could write copies at the time of sale on to memory sticks, and sell you one if you forgot your own.

- Richard Stallman

If ebooks mean that readers' freedom must either increase or decrease, we must demand the increase.

- Richard Stallman

The desire to be rewarded for one's creativity does not justify depriving the world in general of all or part of that creativity.

- Richard Stallman

A smartphone is a computer - it's not built using a computer - the job it does is the job of being a computer. So, everything we say about computers, that the software you run should be free - you should insist on that - applies to smart phones just the same. And likewise to those tablets.

- Richard Stallman

People sometimes ask me if it is a sin in the Church of Emacs to use vi. Using a free version of vi is not a sin; it is a penance. So happy hacking.

- Richard Stallman

Software patents are dangerous to software developers because they impose monopolies on software ideas.

- Richard Stallman

Officially, MPAA stands for Motion Picture Association of America, but I suggest that MPAA stands for Malicious Power Attacking All.

- Richard Stallman

I could have made money this way, and perhaps amused myself writing code. But I knew that at the end of my career, I would look back on years of building walls to divide people, and feel I had spent my life making the world a worse place.

- Richard Stallman

Value your freedom or you will lose it, teaches history. 'Don't bother us with politics', respond those who don't want to learn.

- Richard Stallman

Sharing is good, and with digital technology, sharing is easy.

- Richard Stallman

Android is a major step towards an ethical, user-controlled, free-software portable phone, but there is a long way to go.

- Richard Stallman

There is nothing wrong with wanting pay for work, or seeking to maximize one's income, as long as one does not use means that are destructive.

- Richard Stallman

When I launched the development of the GNU system, I explicitly said the purpose of developing this system is so we can use our computers and have freedom, thus if you use some other free system instead but you have freedom, then it's a success. It's not popularity for our code but it's success for our goal.

- Richard Stallman

Whether gods exist or not, there is no way to get absolute certainty about ethics. Without absolute certainty, what do we do? We do the best we can.

- Richard Stallman

The reason that a good citizen does not use such destructive means to become wealthier is that, if everyone did so, we would all become poorer from the mutual destructiveness.

- Richard Stallman

The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women's fashion.

- Richard Stallman

Also, because schools must teach the spirit of goodwill, the habit of helping others around you, every class should have this rule: students, if you bring software to class you may not keep it for yourself.

- Richard Stallman

One reason you should not use web applications to do your computing is that you lose control.

- Richard Stallman

The interesting thing about cloud computing is that we've redefined cloud computing to include everything that we already do.

- Richard Stallman

If you want to accomplish something in the world, idealism is not enough - you need to choose a method that works to achieve the goal.

- Richard Stallman

Fighting patents one by one will never eliminate the danger of software patents, any more than swatting mosquitoes will eliminate malaria.

- Richard Stallman

Control over the use of one's ideas really constitutes control over other people's lives; and it is usually used to make their lives more difficult.

- Richard Stallman