The photo comes from wikimedia.org
"Richard_Stallman_at_LibrePlanet_2019" by Ruben Rodriguez
The photo comes from
wikimedia.org
"Richard_Stallman_at_LibrePlanet_2019" by Ruben Rodriguez
I'm looking for speaking invitations for a trip in January and February that will include some part of Europe, then India, then some other part of Europe.
The first visit to Europe will be roughly Jan 16 to 22. The visit to India will start Jan 22 and can continue into February. The second visit to Europe will be after that. Those dates are flexible.
One advantage of this period for you is that the intercontinental flights are already covered, so you won't need to pay for that.
If you are interested in inviting me, and you have a venue to use and a public to invite, please email me soon with "speaking invitation" in the Subject field, using the name rms and the host gnu dot org.
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The views expressed here are my personal views, not those of
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For the sake of separation, this site has always been
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If you want to send me GPG-encrypted mail, do not trust key servers! Some of them have phony keys under my name and email address, made by someone else as a trick. See gpg.html for my real key.
Richard Stallman has cancer. Fortunately it is slow-growing and manageable follicular lymphoma. Treatment put it into remission, and he can expect to live many more years. However, he now has to be even more careful not to catch Covid-19.
The largest part of the site is the political notes, and they are typically updated every day.
I'm looking for people to
Free/Libre software and freedom in the digital society
Location: Free University of Bozen-Bolzano
Registration and program: fuss.bz.it
US citizens: call on New York governor Hochul to remove NYC night-mayor Adams for his deal to escape federal corruption charges.
The National Campaign for Justice mailed out this:
It's a corrupt quid pro quo, and New Yorkers are the bargaining chip. This isn't speculation. [The corrupter]'s ICE henchman Tom Homan basically admitted it on FOX News, practically waving the deal in our faces:
"If he doesn’t come through ... I’ll be in his office, up his butt, saying, ‘Where the hell is the agreement we came to?’"
Here's how to make the actionnetwork.org letter campaign linked above work without running the site's nonfree JavaScript code. (See https://gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html.)
First, make sure you have deactivated JavaScript in your browser or are using the LibreJS plug-in.
I have done the next step for you: I added `?nowrapper=true' to the end of the campaign URL before posting it above. That should bring you to a page that starts with, "Letter campaigns will not work without javascript!"
They indeed won't work without some manual help, but the following simple method seems adequate for many of them, including this one.
To start, fill in the personal information answers in the box on the right side of the page. That's how you say who's sending the letter.
Then click the "START WRITING" button. That will take you to a page that can't function without nonfree JavaScript code. (To ensure it doesn't function perversely _by running_ that nonfree code, you should enable LibreJS or disable JavaScript before going there.) You can finish sending without that code By editing its URL in the browser's address bar, as follows:
First, go to the end and insert `&nowrapper=true'. Then tell the browser to visit that URL. This should give you a version of the page that works without JavaScript. Edit the subject and body of your letter. Finally, click on the "SEND LETTER" button, and you're done.
This method seems to work for letter campaigns that send the letters to a fixed list of recipients, the same recipients for every sender. Editing and revisiting the URL is the only additional step needed to bypass the nonfree JavaScript code. I'm sure you'll agree it is a small effort for the result of supporting the campaign without opening your computer to unjust (and potentially malicious) software.
US citizens: call on Congress to protect the CFPB from sabotage by the muskrat's dog(e)s.
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and say to protect the CFPB so it can continue to protect Americans from gouging by banks and other financial dis-services.
Here is what the wrecker has been doing to the CFPB.
The senators in the Senate Banking Committee are well paid by banksters and want to get it out of the way so they can gouge using junk fees.
Another way US banks gouge the public is by pushing credit card interest rates up to loan shark levels. This happens because the Supreme Court eliminated states' ability to regulate the interest rates they can charge.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: phone your congresscritter and call on per to defeat HR 899, which would abolish the Department of Education. This would be a big blow to the children in non-rich US families. The children of poor people would have even less chance of getting good jobs, and they might have to go without some meals.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: demand no oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve.
US citizens: call on Congress to block funding for the wrecker's deportation machine.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress to prohibit members of Congress from owning stocks.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress to block the wrecker's attack on renewable electricity.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
US citizens: call on Congress to defeat the SAVE Act.
"This baseless voter suppression bill would create unnecessary barriers to voting for [nonwhites], young people, disabled people, transgender people, people with low incomes, tribal voters, rural voters, survivors of natural and climate disasters, and military families, not to mention the tens of millions of married women who have changed their names."
It would also block remote registration and registration by mail.
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
I am considering a trip to Europe for late April, and perhaps half of May. If you would like to invite me to speak in Europe, please send me email now at rms on the site gnu dot org, with the subject line "Europe in the spring". You'll have to fund the extra costs of my travel there.
Please repost this elsewhere to spread the word.
US citizens: phone your senators (especially Republicans) and say not to vote to confirm Kash Patel as head of the FBI.
US citizens: phone each of your senators and say this (in your own words).
Stop the attacks on government agencies that Congress has established and the gutting of crucial programs that Congress has already funded.Congress sets the budget — not the president and not the hateful rich. I urge you to treat this like the constitutional crisis it is by stopping business as usual in the Senate until Trump and Musk back down.
If no one picks up, please leave a message — it'll count!
If you phone, please spread the word! Main Switchboard: +1-202-224-3121
I'm looking for speaking invitations for a trip in January and February that will include some part of Europe, then India, then some other part of Europe.
The first visit to Europe will be roughly Jan 16 to 22. The visit to India will start Jan 22 and can continue into February. The second visit to Europe will be after that. Those dates are flexible.
One advantage of this period for you is that the intercontinental flights are already covered, so you won't need to pay for that.
If you are interested in inviting me, and you have a venue to use and a public to invite, please email me soon with "speaking invitation" in the Subject field, using the name rms and the host gnu dot org.
I'm looking for a cartoonist who would like to draw cartoons for me once in a while. If you're interested, please write to rms, which refers to me, at the location gnu period org.
Boycott Chevron, in the name of Steven Donziger.
A pitifully weak attempt to solve a real problem: asking for a federal law that would permit victims of domestic abuse and stalking to demand that data brokers delete information about them.
Data, once collected, will be abused. The way to prevent that abuse is to facilitate refusing to hand it over in the first place.
Here is my proposal for protecting the specific people known to be in particular danger, and everyone else who could be harmed if individuals, businesses or governments use their personal data against them without a search warrant: require services to be available anonymously.
The selfish interest of those who keep trade secrets is rational but antisocial. In many cases the only harm it does is to hold back the general advance of technology. But sometimes it does really nasty things. For digital hardware and software, it often gives companies a way to subjugate their users. Regarding use of toxic chemicals, it endangers public health.
Why would legislators pass laws to "protect" companies instead of protecting the people they harm? I suspect it is partly because these companies are influential and the legislators seek their support, and partly because the legislators ask them for campaign funds.
But it is also partly the result of the mindset of "trickle down", which assumes that the only way to get more funds for the state is to let increase the size of the economy by letting companies have what they want. Unfortunately, what they want is often to be allowed to harm the public.
Most Democrats in Congress got corrupted this way in the 80s and 90s. (The exceptions are the progressive Democrats.) Now in the UK Starmer is guiding Labour into that sort of corruption.
Clearly our laws should say that any public need to know about the presence of toxic substances in a business facility overrides the desire to keep them secret.
Whether the owners are Chinese is a question that there is no need to ask, because the state should never give money to a business "to support it." Instead it should offer to lend money to the company for suitable repayment, or else buy equity at a fair price.
These two ways of supporting a company avoid giving the owners an opporunity to rip off the state -- which the company's owners are likely to try to do, if they can, regardless of which country they are from.
With a policy like this, it wouldn't matter which country the company's owners are from.
It is exciting that SB 976 turns towards restricting recommendation algorithms. But these options should not be limited to minors — every user should have this choice. (Please do not refer to teenagers as "children"; that feeds the US tendency to treat them like children and retard their development.)
However, I suggest taking a step beyond just choosing to use or not use the platform's addiction system. Recommendation algorithms should be completely separated from platforms!
If you want to use a nontrivial recommendation algorithm, you should be able to choose it yourself and use it anonymously. You could send it the URLs you want it to base its choices on. These might be some of the pages you had visited, and perhaps pages you had not visited.
Then it should send you its recommendations. You could pass all, or just some, or none of those recommendations to the platform to look at them.
AB 1949 is admirable because it gives a small boost to privacy for users of all ages, not only for children. It isn't enough, though — users should also be guaranteed the right and possibility to access through the Tor network and to use aliases. And collection of a user's data by the state should require a warrant against the user.
Here are some quotations that I particularly like.
You can now read the political notes on Mastodon.
Facebook says that blocking posts about Linux or "Linux" was an unintentional error.
US citizens: call on New York governor Hochul to remove NYC night-mayor Adams for his deal to escape federal corruption charges.
The National Campaign for Justice mailed out this:
It's a corrupt quid pro quo, and New Yorkers are the bargaining chip. This isn't speculation. [The corrupter]'s ICE henchman Tom Homan basically admitted it on FOX News, practically waving the deal in our faces:
"If he doesn’t come through ... I’ll be in his office, up his butt, saying, ‘Where the hell is the agreement we came to?’"
Here's how to make the actionnetwork.org letter campaign linked above work without running the site's nonfree JavaScript code. (See https://gnu.org/philosophy/javascript-trap.html.)
First, make sure you have deactivated JavaScript in your browser or are using the LibreJS plug-in.
I have done the next step for you: I added `?nowrapper=true' to the end of the campaign URL before posting it above. That should bring you to a page that starts with, "Letter campaigns will not work without javascript!"
They indeed won't work without some manual help, but the following simple method seems adequate for many of them, including this one.
To start, fill in the personal information answers in the box on the right side of the page. That's how you say who's sending the letter.
Then click the "START WRITING" button. That will take you to a page that can't function without nonfree JavaScript code. (To ensure it doesn't function perversely _by running_ that nonfree code, you should enable LibreJS or disable JavaScript before going there.) You can finish sending without that code By editing its URL in the browser's address bar, as follows:
First, go to the end and insert `&nowrapper=true'. Then tell the browser to visit that URL. This should give you a version of the page that works without JavaScript. Edit the subject and body of your letter. Finally, click on the "SEND LETTER" button, and you're done.
This method seems to work for letter campaigns that send the letters to a fixed list of recipients, the same recipients for every sender. Editing and revisiting the URL is the only additional step needed to bypass the nonfree JavaScript code. I'm sure you'll agree it is a small effort for the result of supporting the campaign without opening your computer to unjust (and potentially malicious) software.
The wrecker's agents fired some of the workers that maintain security for US nuclear weapons. Then it realized that this was stupid, but it can't figure out how to reach them to offer them their jobs back.
If you do things without careful thought, you are likely to make mistakes. I am sure the wrecker's destruction workers have made many mistakes in its haste. But usually they don't care, and say nothing.
What is newsworthy this time is that they care enough to try to undo it.
US citizens: call on Congress to protect the CFPB from sabotage by the muskrat's dog(e)s.
For decades the US has been systematically trying to curb global corruption, but the corrupter has eliminated many of the programs that contributed to the campaign. It looks like the US government has flipped to the pro-corruption side.
Alan Singer describes the history over time of his relationship with Israel, developing from intense support to moral reproach.
Rejecting the superstition that if we refuse to call it "fascism" that will somehow restrain the regime from going all the way there.
*In slashing staff and disabling entire agencies the administration is lacerating the structures of US democracy.*
The Department of Education used to be responsible for enforcing accessibility requirements for US schools, as to ensure disabled students could attend school. Now it has more or less stopped doing this.
The wrecker wants to eliminate the Department of Education, so we must expect the US government will abandon the goal as well as the means.
I made the above link to an article because it tells us something important about racism. Racism is an intense form of bigotry; it is a collective injustice that I condemn, and support the campaign against. I think posting a link to that article will help that campaign.
Ironically, that article itself embodies symbolic bigotry by capitalizing "black" but not "white". (To avoid this bigotry, capitalize both words or neither one.) I denounce lesser forms of bigotry too, and I don't want to normalize symbolic bigotry by letting it pass without calling it out. Normally I avoid any mention of articles that practice it.
I had conflicting feelings about that article based on these two valid goals: to make a link, because of its important point about racism, or not to link, to avoid normalizing the article's own bigotry. I concluded that the first goal could not be neglected, and made the link. But the second goal also should not be neglected -- hence this note to criticize the article's own bigotry.
*By voting in favor of nominees they knew should never be approved, Republican senators became [the corrupter's] subjects.*
The US government plans to scan the internet for postings that express hostility to the deportation thugs, then search high and low for all information it can get about the person who posted them.
We cannot at this point expect that this search will confine itself to legal methods.
The right-wing-controlled Pentagon is imposing right-wing censorship on the libraries of the schools for military personnel.
Vance distorted edge-cases of European laws to attack crucial human rights, and to promote his allies in Europe — European far-right extremists-Nazis — and encourage them to seize repressive power there as the Trusk regime is doing in the US.
European anti-Nazis need to be bold, not hesitate and rely on measures that aim only to oppose them.
Since the US appreciates Putin more than Europe, and is as likely to behave like Europe's enemy than like Europe's enemy, Europe urgently needs to re-arm.
The lesson from this is that European governments must ensure their weapons production does not depend significantly on US industry. They could be cut off by sanctions at any time. Europe must cease buying US weapons systems that depend on US spare parts, US maintenance, or software that Europe cannot maintain and change.
NATO no longer makes sense with the US as a member, so perhaps the other members of NATO should construct a new alliance without the US. That could be a framework to facilitate joint defense of Greenland, for instance. With luck, that would deter the wrecker from actually invading Greenland.
(satire) *[The saboteur-in-chief] Unsure What Department He Has To Cut To Make JD Vance Go Away.*
Attorney General Bondi is suing New York State to overturn laws that permit unauthorized immigrants to get driver's licenses, and to inform them if the federal government asks the state registry of motor vehicles about them.
The practical reason for this law is to improve road safety, but Bondi is a fanatic and sees no loss if Americans die to achieve her goals of deportation.
Fremont, California, has made it a crime to be homeless there.
I wonder what Fremont will do to people found to be homeless there. Jail them? That would be expensive. Forcibly transport them to out of the city? The city which does that would be shirking its share of the burden of housing people, and dumping it on other cities.
Perhaps it will transport them by helicopter to a wilderness area, where no one will notice if they can't make it out. That fits the cruel spirit of the repression of the homeless.
Right-wing Israelis are proceeding parcel by parcel with driving Palestinians off their land and seizing the land.
*World’s largely unprotected peatlands are ticking "carbon bomb", warns study.*
The wrecker is eliminating a broad range of protections for nature, to allow more fossil fuel extraction.
Put that together with the additional global heating caused by burning those fossil fuels, and the result is a double danger.
The idea of an "energy emergency" that could be addressed by rapidly burning up the Earth's remaining fossil fuels is doubly nonsense. Keeping fossil fuel inexpensive for a couple of decades would be followed by rapid price increases, and in the mean time we would suffer from the air pollution and the heat.
*White House bans AP journalists from Oval Office amid continued … dispute* the name of the Gulf of Mexico.
The wrecker is hoping to teach all news organizations that he will damage them if they don't completely obey. The AP is carrying out heroic resistance to that threat.
I too have declines to do interviews with people if they did not commitments about whet names to use. But my declining to give someone an interview is not a threat to per freedom to work, because I am not so important or influential that anyone would imagine perse could not do without it.
The four factors of the apocalypse:
global heating, global hating,
global eating, global mating.
Copy this button (courtesy of R.Siddharth) to express your rejection of Facebook.
Non-oppressive Commercial E-books
Facebook's face recognition demonstrates a threat to everyone's privacy. I therefore ask people not to put photos of me on Facebook; you can do likewise.
Of course, Facebook is bad for many other reasons as well.
I'd like to make a list of countries that do not require a national identity card, and have no plans to adopt one. If you live in or have confirmed knowledge of such a country, please send email to rms at gnu.org.
Here's my list of countries with no national ID cards and no plans for one: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, UK. Australia's previous government tried to institute national ID cards, but the Labor government dropped the plan.
India has mostly finished imposing a national biometric ID number in a grand act of oppression.
Switzerland has national ID cards which are optional, but they or some other government ID card are needed for some purposes.
Iceland doesn't have ID cards as such, but they have ID numbers that citizens are forced to use frequently. For example, the national ID number is often required to rent a video or use a gym.
Denmark issues non-photo ID cards with a "person number", and many services use this card to identify people.
Norway will impose a national biometric ID card.
Ireland - national ID card by stealth.
ACLU: the five dangers of national ID cards.
Wikipedia has a list of identity card policies by country.
Stay away from certain countries because of their bad immigration policies.
Avoid flight connections in these airports because of their treatment of passengers.
People often ask how I manage to continue devoting myself to progressive activism (such as the free software movement) for years without burning out. The best way I can answer is by recommending a book, The Lifelong Activist by Hillary Rettig.
I disagree with the book on one theoretical point in the last part of the book: we shouldn't think of political activism as being marketing and sales, because those terms refer to business, and politics is something much more important than mere business. However, this doesn't diminish the value of the book's practical advice about borrowing techniques from marketing and sales.
Disclosure: I am friends with the author.
Personal Declaration of Richard Stallman and Euclides Mance on Solidarity Economy and Free Software.
I have reposted some of Rick Falkvinge's articles. As posted on his site, you can't see them in a browser without running some nonfree Javascript code which is apparently non-free. These versions show the same text, without the obstacle.
These are my political articles that are not related to the GNU operating system or free software. For GNU-related articles, see the GNU philosophy directory. You can also download copies of my book, Free Software, Free Society, 3rd edition.
"Those who profess to favor freedom, yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."Frederick Douglass, American Abolitionist, Letter to an associate, 1849
Here are notes about various issues I care about, usually with links to
more information. The current notes are
here. For all previous
notes, see this page.
See this page for information on efforts to maintain links in the political notes.
Political notes about the 2001 G8 summit in Genoa, Italy are being archived on their own page.
Richard Stallman's bio and publicity photos, and other things of interest to the press, have been moved to a separate page.
The Free Software Song, by Richard M. Stallman. You can listen to a performance of the song: Free Software Song performed by Thor Here is a variant of this song called "The Free Firmware Song".
Earth under attack from planet Koch.On doxing, and how to spell it.
A Spanish cartoon: La Ruleta
Española.
Here I am wearing my "power tie".
Wine snobs get their comeuppance.
Here I am struggling to open a bottle of water.
My application to an join Marian Henley's ex-boyfriends list.
My funny poetry and song parodies.
A song parody, Colors of the Lisp, by Jefferson Carpenter.
The text to a filk song, Johnny v. N., by Paul Rubin.
My Puns in English (Little Leaguer, August 2019).
My Puns in Spanish (New pun: Apostasía April 2019)
My Puns in French (New pun: Microsoft à l'école July 2019)
My Puns in Italian (New pun: Quale pesce fa starnutire? New 10/2018)
My Puns in German (New 02/2016)
Linguistic Swifties (Now with: Wintu, Penutian, Cochiti, Taos, and Towa.)
--Saint
IGNUcius-- The Church of Emacs will soon
be officially listed by at least one person as his religion for
census purposes.
There are no godfathers in the Church of Emacs, since there are no gods, but you can be someone's editorfather.
Stallman Does Dallas: "I have to warn you that Texans have been known to have an adverse reaction to my personality…"
The Dalai Lama today announced the official release of Yellow Hat GNU/Linux.
I found a funny song about the Mickey Mouse Copyright Act (officially the Sonny Bono Copyright Act) which extended copyright retroactively by 20 years on works made as early as the 1920s.
If you are a geek and read Spanish, you will love Raulito el Friki, who said "Hello, world!" immediately after he was born. Here's an archive of this now-defunct comic strip.
Sleeping with Stallman at MIT.
ESR's favorite programming language: Objectivist C.
No Kludges in Cluj (June 2014)
Made for You (December 2012) (local copy) Esperanto translation
A science fiction story: Jinnetic Engineering (in Portuguese, Farsi, Spanish, Armenian, Russian, French, and Italian).My book of essays about the philosophy of Software Freedom, is available from the GNU Press.
Avec des chapeaux French song parody.
My radio program of Music from Georgia, originally broadcast on WUOG in Athens, Georgia on Oct 13, 2014.
Quantum Theory and Abortion Rights
A proposal for gender neutrality in Spanish, suitable for both speech and writing.
On Hacking: In June 2000, while visiting Korea, I did a fun hack that clearly illustrates the original and true meaning of the word "hacker".
Predicting the attack on Pearl Harbor
I would like to thank:
Please send comments on these web pages to rms at gnu period org.
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