"rms" visits SJSU

by Steve Sloan, San Jose, CA

On September 11 2007, Richard Matthew Stallman visited SJSU and spoke. Stallman launched the GNU Project (Gnu's not Unix) expousing Free Software that sought to and finally brought to the world a free version of UNIX (with help from Linus Torvolds) spoke at SJSU today. Most of what he said I have already heard, but what a thrill it was to hear rms (lower case intentional) say it himself. In the first edition of the Hacker's Dictionary, he wrote, "'Richard Stallman' is just my mundane name; you can call me 'rms'." This was the name he used in him computer accounts. Hacker, in those days, was a term for a person who made things work through unique and creative methods and it did not have the negative connotation it now has.

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