Richard Stallman is a well-known computer activist, and he was a pioneer of the free software movement. His speeches and writings focus on the idea of freedom, as he sees it as an essential right for modern civilization.
He is also famous for his advocacy against software patents, digital rights management (DRM), and other legal and technical systems that he believes take away users’ freedom. He has fought against a variety of these systems, including software license agreements, activation keys, non-disclosure agreements, dongles, copy restriction, and proprietary formats.
The GNU Project – founded in September 1983, by Stallman and others – is a software development effort that is entirely free and open source. Its underlying mission is to provide the tools that empower people and organizations to build their own software.
Stallman has worked on a number of projects in the free software movement, such as the GNU Compiler Collection, GNU Emacs text editor, and GNU Debugger. He is the main author of the GNU General Public License (GPL), which is considered the most popular open-source software license in the world.
He has also been an advocate against digital rights management, and he is a supporter of the International Music Score Library Project. He was one of the founding members of the League for Programming Freedom, and is an active member of the Free Software Foundation.
Taler – a payment system that is not a cryptocurrency
In the crypto world, there has been a lot of talk about blockchain technology and its potential for creating a new type of online banking system. But Stallman doesn’t believe that cryptocurrencies are the best option for this kind of technology.
Instead, he thinks that a new type of payment system should be created that uses tokens, rather than coins. The tokens can be stored and sent between users, and the transaction is encrypted.
However, he also thinks that the cryptocurrency community should be aware that if they use their system as a method of circumventing government authority, it could become vulnerable to money laundering.
This is why Stallman suggests that instead of relying on a cryptocurrency, people should adopt a new type of payment system. He calls this system gnu taler encryption, and it would allow for anonymous payments between users to businesses.
The only thing that the merchants (or anyone who receives payments) would need to do is verify that the token belongs to someone who is over the age of 16, which is a simple task that could be handled by GNU Taler.
Moreover, the system’s privacy features are designed to make it more difficult for governments to assess taxes on income and to prevent money laundering. In addition, the system is audited by international institutions specialized in economic issues.
This is a very interesting approach to a problem that has been plaguing the global economy for decades, and it’s definitely a step in the right direction. The system has the potential to revolutionize the way we interact with businesses and with each other in the future.