> His obsession with free software is far beyond the bounds of reason. He's far-sighted and he defends rights before they become important to the mainstream. H

> His obsession with free software is far beyond the bounds of reason. He's far-sighted and he defends rights before they become important to the mainstream. He has taken what some people view as an extreme position because if he was more moderate then those rights would be more easily eroded. When the Lispers at the MIT AI Lab split into two proprietary factions ( http://www.freemedialibrary.com/index.php/Chapter_7:_A_Stark_Moral_Choice http://www.freemedialibrary.com/index.php/Chapter_7:_A_Stark... ), Richard Stallman stayed behind and wrote an open source version of their developments. You may have a descendant of this code installed on your desktop. When Richard Stallman's story called The Right To Read appeared in the Feb 1997 issue of The Communications Of The ACM ( http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html ), people thought this was an unlikely dystopian future. However, 11 years later, DRM is a real and present situation which affects anyone who uses a DVD player, a Tivo, an iPod, an iPhone, a Kindle and Windows Media Player - and many more who don't.