Timeline of Richard Stallman By Munachobizness Mar 16, 1953 Richard Stallman was born Period: Mar 16, 1953 to 2020 Richard Stallman Jan 1, 1971 Stallman became a programmer at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory May 29, 1974 Graduated from Harvard Jan 1, 1975 Starts Job as a research assistant at MIT Jan 1, 1976 Stallman developed the first extensible Emacs text editor Jan 1, 1977 Stallman published a paper on an AI truth maintenance system called dependency-directed backtracking Jan 1, 1980 Stallman was refused access to the source code for the software of a newly installed laser printer, the Xerox 9700 Sep 27, 1983 Stallman Launches the GNU Project Feb 1, 1984 Stallman quit his job at MIT to work full-time on the GNU project Jan 1, 1985 Stallman published the GNU Manifesto Oct 1, 1985 Started the Free Software Foundation Jan 1, 1989 Co-founded the League for Programming Freedom Jan 1, 1990 Recieves MacArthur Foundation Fellowship Jan 1, 1998 Recieves the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Pioneer award Jan 1, 1999 Stallman called for development of a free online encyclopedia through the means of inviting the public to contribute articles