Richard Matthew Stallman is an American computer programmer and an advocate for free software. He is the founder of the Free Software Foundation.
Born on March 16th, 1953, Stallman obtained a degree in physics from Harvard University, and became a programmer at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. He has been an active campaigner of free software since then. The concept behind it is to distribute software in such a manner that its users receive the freedom to use, study, distribute, and modify that software.
In 1983, Stallman started working on the GNU Project. GNU is an operating system and a collection of free software. He developed the GNU Compiler Collection and GNU Emacs, and wrote the GNU General Public License (a free software license) too.
In 1985, Stallman founded the Free Software Foundation. It worked on promoting free software and development of the GNU General Public License. There also arose the concept of the ‘copy left’ agreement, providing authors a way to allow their works to be modified by users without releasing them to the public domain.
Though Stallman did not complete his PhD, he has received around 15 honorary doctorates. He is also a recipient of many international awards including the MacArthur Fellowship, Yuri Rubinsky Memorial Award, and the ACM Software System Award for the development and leadership of GCC.