Richard Stallman at TUM on 21.10.2025 18:00, MW2001
Richard Stallman will be visiting us on October 21, 2025. He will be giving a talk on "Free/Libre software and freedom in the digital society".
The talk will be in Rudolf-Diesel Hörsaal (MW2001) on Campus Garching at 18:00.
The talk will be broadcast and recorded through TUM live.
The talk is open to the public and attendance is free. Registration is not required.
If you like, you can bring stickers to swap with other attendees.
Please respect Mr. Stallman's wishes of social distancing and do not try to storm the speaker's floor. Please also do not occupy the lecture hall beforehand in order to not disturb the previous (university) lecture.
Topic of the Talk
There are many threats to freedom in the digital society. They include nonfree software, massive surveillance, and censorship.
Nonfree proprams are often designed to restrict users, control users or manipulate users. The War on Sharing aims to stop users from sharing copies of published works. Computers for voting make election results untrustworthy.
Other threats come from use of web services, implemented by companies that can impose any conditions whatsoever.
Finally, most internet activities (aside from those which existed before 2000) are precarious, dependent on permission from one company.
All of these threats originate more or less in the use of nonfree software. That is why free software is the first battle in the liberation of the digital society.
About the Speaker
Dr. Richard Stallman launched the free software movement in 1983 and started the development of the GNU operating system (see www.gnu.org) in 1984. GNU is free software: everyone has the freedom to copy it and redistribute it, with or without changes. The GNU/Linux system, basically the GNU operating system with Linux as the kernel, is used on tens of millions of computers today. Stallman has received the ACM Grace Hopper Award and the ACM Software and Systems Award, a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Pioneer Award, and the the Takeda Award for Social/Economic Betterment, as well as many doctorates honoris causa, and has been inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame.
