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Richard Stallman and the Fall of the Clueless Nerd

Thirty-five years ago I wrote a book called Hackers. The last section centered on a hugely odd young man who considered himself the lone survivor of an unsung subculture of information sharing at MIT. He was, he said, like Ishi, the last of the Yahi people, the sole member of his indigenous tribe. Stallman, aka RMS (his email handle), later achieved fame in the digital realm as the champion of free software.

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