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Richard Stallman is born.
Stallman born to Alice Lippman and Daniel Stallman. New York City -
Enrolled in Harvard University
Became a programmer for the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory -
Hired as summer intern for IBM
Tasked to write numerical analysis program in FORTRAN during his summer as a senior in high school. -
MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
1971-1974 Worked on various projects including TECO, Emacs, and the Lisp machine os, establishing his figure in the hacker community. -
Graduated Harvard University
Graduated magna cum laude with a degree in physics. -
U.S. Copyright Act of 1976
Federal law regarding copyrights that began the shift in the perception of the free open source environment. -
Denial of Access to Xerox 9700 Printer
Stallman and his colleagues were denied access of the source code of the software to the new Xerox 9700 printer. This prevented him from adding new helpful features to the program and had helped shape his view on the need for open source software. -
Lisp Machines, Inc vs. Symbolics
Symbolics was a company created off of Lisp Machines, Inc to market Lisp machines using capital funding. Against the idea of creating a monopoly, Stallman worked for 2 years to replicate Symbolics' results to prevent their domination on the market. -
Stallman announces plans for GNU os
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Stallman quits job at MIT
Stallman leaves MIT to work full time on GNU project. -
Founded Free Software Foundation
Founded Free Software Foundation, focusing on the proliferation of free software. -
Earned the Grace Mary Hopper Award
Stallman earns the Grace Mary Hopper Award for pioneering work in the development of the extensible editor EMACS (Editing Macros). -
Torvald Develops GNU Kernel
Linus Torvaled develops the GNU kernel, Linux, one of the most wildly used operating systems to date. -
Stallman develops GNUPedia
Stallman develops a free online encyclopedia available to everyone; later gives way to Wikipedia. -
Indian State of Kerala Switches to Free Software
Stallman persuades the government of the Indian State of Kerala to switch from proprietary software to free open source software. -
Earned the ACM Software System Award
Earned the ACM Software System Award for the development and leadership of the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), enabling extensive hardware and software innovation.
