Richard Stallman

“With software, there are two possibilities: either the users control the program or the program controls the users.”

“The idea of 'intellectual property' is a seductive mirage.”

“If programmers deserve to be rewarded for creating innovative programs, by the same token they deserve to be punished if they restrict the use of these programs.”

“Sharing is good, and with digital technology, sharing is easy.”

“Playfully doing something difficult is the essence of hacking.”

“Proprietary software is an injustice.”

“Free software is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of 'free' as in 'free speech,' not as in 'free beer'.”

“To me, 'copyright' is the name of a specific system of regulation, which I think is a bad system.”

“The GNU Project was conceived in 1983 as a way of bringing back the cooperative spirit that had prevailed in the computing community in earlier days.”

“Copyleft is a general method for making a program free software and requiring all modified and extended versions of the program to be free software as well.”

“The free software movement is a political movement which happens to use software as its domain.”

“Patents are a ridiculous institution; they are ridiculously inefficient.”

“I could have made money this way, and perhaps amused myself writing code. But I knew that at the end of my career, I would look back on years of building walls to divide people, and feel I had spent my life making the world a worse place.”

“Once you have a good basic education, you can learn anything if you know how to learn.”

“Giving people freedom is the right thing to do.”