Richard Stallman

Our lord and savior.

Richard Matthew Stallman (rms) is a software freedom activist, computer programmer, autist, philosopher, hacker, freethinker, prophet, the father, the son, and the holy spirit. He is the author of the GPL.

Who is he, though?

Richard Stallman began working hard to replicate the output of the Unix team, but under the GPL, which meant that anyone could use, read, modify or distribute the source code. Once this was combined by Linus Torvalds with Torvalds' kernel, GNU/Linux was born. Ever since, he has been tirelessly working hard to promote the freedoms of use, reading, modification or distribution of software everywhere with said GPL. He is also one of the original legendary MIT hackers.

If you wish to learn more about Richard Stallman, check out his book, Free as in Freedom. If you want to learn more about his views, check out his other book Free Software, Free Society.

Relationship with /g/

Richard Stallman attempts to answer every email he gets, and at the very least he reads them if he can't answer. This has led to a rocky "relationship" of sorts with /g/ that has been chronicled on pages of his website. Among these, very recently, he created a page addressed "to 4chan" (but very clearly /g/) in which he "clears up some erroneous information" about himself. /g/ has often made things for Richard Stallman as a token of appreciation, such as the composite of images pictured below to the left.

Gallery

"A sort of drawing of me, a composite of photos, made by people at 4chan." - Richard Stallman
The man himself gracefully eats something from his foot.
Our holy saviour