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Richard M. Stallman

Crusty old hippie, without whom free software might not exist. RMS created the Free Software Foundation, which takes upon the task of writing free versions of the software found on closed-source Unix computers.

Do note the lack of the term open source in that description; RMS despises the term as it takes away from the freedom aspect of his ‘free software’ term; RMS believes that it’s not enough that software should not cost money; it should also protect and enhance the freedom of those that use it. The term ‘free’ is overloaded in English and is commonly elucidated thusly:

free as in beer; free as in speech.

RMS believes the term “open source” focuses too much on the former, and not enough on the latter.

In addition to his FSF activism, RMS is known as a world-class programmer, writing much of the GNU software fleet himself, and is author of the Emacs text editor, inside which some people spend their entire computing lives.

RMS is also the chief author of the GNU Public License (GPL) the license under which much open source software is released. The GPL says that software so licensed must have its source code available to anyone that uses the source code, and that derivative software projects must also be distributed under the GPL. In this way, the GPL is “viral,” in that it spreads from software project to software project through derivative works.