“People with new ideas could distribute programs as freeware, asking for donations from satisfied users, or selling hand-holding services. I have met people who are already working this way successfully.”

1980s, GNU Manifesto (1985)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "People with new ideas could distribute programs as freeware, asking for donations from satisfied users, or selling hand…" by Richard Stallman?
Richard Stallman photo
Richard Stallman 130
American software freedom activist, short story writer and … 1953

Related quotes

Richard Stallman photo

“DOES EVERYBODY THINK I am an asshole?” Curran asked. “Only people who know you or have met you.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Shifts

Linus Torvalds photo

“Portability is for people who cannot write new programs.”

Linus Torvalds (1969) Finnish-American software engineer and hacker

Post to comp.os.minix newsgroup, 1992-01-29, Torvalds, Linus, 2006-08-28 http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=1992Jan29.231426.20469%40klaava.Helsinki.FI, According to Torvalds, this was "tongue in cheek" (Ibid.)
1990s, 1991-94

Joseph Addison photo

“With regard to donations always expect the most from prudent people, who keep their own accounts.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

This is attributed to Addison in The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations (1993) with a citation of "Economy and Benevolence" in Interesting Anecdotes, Memoirs, Allegories, Essays, and Poetical Fragments (1794) but that was a publication of a contemporary "Mr. Addison" in several volumes, and not the poet. Vol. III of that publication (in 1796), on page 205, does contain these lines, but as part of an anonymous ancecdote.
Misattributed

Al Gore photo

“It's a platform for pursuing the truth, and the decentralized creation and distribution of ideas, in the same way that markets are a decentralized mechanism for the creation and distribution of goods and services. It's a platform, in other words, for reason.”

Al Gore (1948) 45th Vice President of the United States

Quotes, The Assault on Reason (2007)
Context: Fortunately, the Internet has the potential to revitalize the role played by the people in our constitutional framework. It has extremely low entry barriers for individuals. It is the most interactive medium in history and the one with the greatest potential for connecting individuals to one another and to a universe of knowledge. It's a platform for pursuing the truth, and the decentralized creation and distribution of ideas, in the same way that markets are a decentralized mechanism for the creation and distribution of goods and services. It's a platform, in other words, for reason. But the Internet must be developed and protected, in the same way we develop and protect markets — through the establishment of fair rules of engagement and the exercise of the rule of law. The same ferocity that our Founders devoted to protect the freedom and independence of the press is now appropriate for our defense of the freedom of the Internet. The stakes are the same: the survival of our Republic. We must ensure that the Internet remains open and accessible to all citizens without any limitation on the ability of individuals to choose the content they wish regardless of the Internet service provider they use to connect to the Web. We cannot take this future for granted. We must be prepared to fight for it, because of the threat of corporate consolidation and control over the Internet marketplace of ideas.

John McCarthy photo

“Program designers have a tendency to think of the users as idiots who need to be controlled. They should rather think of their program as a servant, whose master, the user, should be able to control it. If designers and programmers think about the apparent mental qualities that their programs will have, they'll create programs that are easier and pleasanter — more humane — to deal with.”

John McCarthy (1927–2011) American computer scientist and cognitive scientist

" The Little Thoughts of Thinking Machines http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/little.html", Psychology Today, December 1983, pp. 46–49. Reprinted in Formalizing Common Sense: Papers By John McCarthy, 1990, ISBN 0893915351
1980s

Denise Richards photo
Richard Stallman photo
Cristoforo Colombo photo

“The two Christians met on the way many people who were going to their towns, women and men, with a firebrand in the hand, herbs to drink the smoke thereof, as they are accustomed.”

Cristoforo Colombo (1451–1506) Explorer, navigator, and colonizer

On smoking, 6 November 1492
Journal of the First Voyage

Related topics