On Sat, 14 Dec 2002, Orlando Fernandes wrote:
btw can anyone tell me how Richard make his money, did he always have it? did he have to work for it? or did he get it fre 'cause he gave all his code away for free? Orlando
This is from Sam Willians' book *Free as in Freedom*, the biography of RMS (aka Richard M. Stallman). Look at the amazing way in which sharing begets further sharing:
"In 1990, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation certified Stallman's genius status when it granted Stallman a MacArthur fellowship, thereby making him a recipient for the organisation's so-called "genuis grant". The grant, a $240,000 (sorry for getting this figure wrong earlier-FN) reward for launching the GNU Project and giving voice to the free software philosophy, relieved a number of short-term concerns. First and foremost, it gave Stallman, a non-salaried employee of the FSF who had been supporting himself through consulting contracts, the ability to devote more time to writing GNU code.
"Ironically, the award also made it possible for Stallman to vote. Months before the award, a fire in Stallman's apartment house had consumed his few earthly possessions. By the time of the award, Stallman was listing himself a 'squatter' at 545 Technology Square. "[The registrar of voters] didn't want to accept that as my address," Stallman would later recall. "A newspaper article about the MacArthur grant said that and then they let me register."
"Most important, the MacArthur money gave Stallman more freedom. Already dedicated to the issue of software freedom, Stallman chose to use the additional freedom to increase his travels in support of the GNU Project mission.
"Interestingly, the ultimate success of the GNU Project and the free software movement in general would stem from one of these trips. In 1990, Stallman paid a visit to the Polytechnic University in Helsinki, Finland. Among the audience members was 21-year-old Linux Torvalds, future developer of the Linux kernel -- the free software kernel destined to fill the GNU Project's most sizeable gap."
Read this book if you can. Ironically, it's freely copyable under the GNU Free Documentation License. Maybe our FSF-India friends could think of getting some publisher publishing a low-cost (or possibly updated) version of it for India.
I know some young programmers who swear that their views on programming were drastically changed after reading this book. FN