The Life of Richard Stallman By Michael Patton Mar 16, 1953 Richard Matthew Stallman is born in New York City, New York, United States. 1971 Enrolls at Harvard University 1975 Joins MIT AI Lab 1983 Stallman founds the GNU Project 1984 Stallman launches the Free Software Foundation (FSF) 1985 Stallman announces the GNU Manifesto, outlining his vision for the GNU Project and the free software movement. 1985 Richard Stallman coins the term "copyleft" to describe the concept of using copyright law to ensure that software remains free and open-source. 1989 Stallman publishes the GNU General Public License (GPL) 1989 Richard Stallman co-founded the League for Programming Freedom 1991 Stallman begins developing the GNU Emacs text editor 2001 Stallman receives the Takeda Techno-Entrepreneurship Award for Social/Economic Well-Being 2002 Stallman receives the ACM Grace Hopper Award for his work in the development of the GNU operating system and his advocacy for free software 2015 Stallman was awarded the Turing Award 2019 Stallman resigns from his positions at the Free Software Foundation and MIT 2021 Stallman announces his return to the Free Software Foundation's board of directors
