Tilting at Windows

“Stallman founded the FSF in 1985, two years after he’d launched
the still-ongoing mass-collaboration GNU software project at MIT
— which provided the fundamentals for the hugely popular
GNU/Linux operating system that’s in millions of computers today.
He has no truck with the “iMoan.” Nor with the “iScrod.” And
certainly not with “MS-DOG,” as he derisively dubs Microsoft’s
MS-DOS operating system.

“Such proprietary technology, trussed up with “malicious
features” designed “specifically for the restriction of the user,”
says Stallman, “impose control to an unusual degree” and represent
“forms of subjugation.”

“And here you thought you were just checking your e-mail.

“But Stallman — a legend in the programmer community for
more than a quarter century — considers it his life’s work to
proselytize the free-software gospel, educating the lay people
who’d otherwise assume that Microsoft or Apple are exclusively
synonymous with computing.

“”They think it’s natural that the software developers will have
power over them,” he says. “My mission is to point out to them that
that isn’t natural. It’s wrong. It’s an injustice. And they
shouldn’t stand for it.”

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