Eminent computer programmer and software freedom pioneer Richard Stallman will be giving a free public lecture at the University of Lincoln, UK.
Stallman, often known by his initials RMS, is best known for creating a computer operating system composed entirely of free software.
He pioneered the concept of ‘copyleft’, which uses the principles of copyright law to preserve the right to use, modify and distribute free software, and is the main author of free software licenses which describe those terms, most notably the GNU General Public License (GPL), the most widely used free software license.
Since the mid-1990s, Stallman has spent most of his time advocating for free software, as well as campaigning against software patents, digital rights management, and other legal and technical systems which he sees as taking away users’ freedoms.
Stallman said: “There are many threats to freedom in the digital society. They include massive surveillance, censorship, digital handcuffs, non-free software that controls users, and the War on Sharing. Other threats come from use of web services. Finally, we have no positive right to do anything in the Internet; every activity is precarious, and can continue only as long as companies are willing to cooperate with it.”
Tom Feltwell, from the University’s School of Computer Science, said: “Richard Stallman is very highly regarded and we are incredibly pleased to have him speaking at the University of Lincoln. His talk will be extremely interesting and non-technical so we would love to see members of the public come along to this special event.”
Stallman’s talk on ‘A Free Digital Society’ will take place at 6pm on Friday, 29th November in the Jackson Lecture Theatre, Main Administration Building, Brayford Pool Campus, University of Lincoln.
To register for the free talk please go to https://crm.fsf.org/civicrm/profile/create?gid=240&reset=1