Richard Stallman

Dr. Richard Stallman's principal work is the Free Software Movement and the GNU operating system - often erroneously referred to as "Linux". His articles on Common Dreams are his own personal views and do not represent the Free Software Foundation or the GNU Project. In addition to his GNU work, Stallman invented the legal technique of copyleft, which can be summarized as "You may change this and redistribute this, but you may not strip off freedom from it," and wrote (with lawyers) the GNU General Public License, which implements copyleft. This inspired Creative Commons. In 1999, Stallman called for development of a free on-line encyclopedia through inviting the public to contribute articles, an idea which helped inspire Wikipedia.