(External) Richard Stallman: Free/Libre Software and Our Freedom

Dear Members of HaskellerZ
Although not Haskell-related, this may be a topic of interest to many of you. I am therefore forwarding this invitation on the HaskellerZ meetup.

Best regards
Farhad

---

Lecture by Dr. Richard Stallman Monday 09.03.2026 17:00 Aula OST-RJ ”Free/Libre Software and Our Freedom: Our shield against many digital injustices"

Threats to our personal and collective well-being through software are an increasing concern. It is my pleasure to invite you to the following talk by Dr. Richard Stallman, who will talk about concrete practical steps we can take to preserve our freedoms. Many of you may already know of Dr. Stallman as the founder of the GNU project and the Free Software Foundation (FSF), as well as his work on GNU Emacs, and the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC).

Please feel free to bring others, and forward this invitation to others who may be interested. The lecture is aimed at a general audience, and will not be technical.

Title:
Free/Libre Software And Our Freedom: Our shield against many digital injustices

Abstract:
The Free Software Movement campaigns for computer users' freedom to cooperate and control their own computing. The Free Software Movement developed the GNU operating system, typically used together with the kernel Linux, specifically to make these freedoms possible in practice for computer use.

Speaker Bio:
Dr. Richard Stallman launched the free software movement in 1983 and started the development of the GNU operating system in 1984. GNU is free software: Everyone has the freedom to copy it and redistribute it, with or without changes. The GNU/Linux system, basically the GNU operating system with Linux as the kernel, is used on tens of millions of computers today. Stallman has received the ACM Grace Hopper Award and the ACM Software and Systems Award, a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Pioneer Award, and the Takeda Award for Social/Economic Betterment, as well as many doctorates honoris causa, and has been inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame.

The lecture will take place in person on Monday 09.03.2026 in the Aula of the OST campus in Rapperswil-Jona (Oberseestrasse 10, 8640 Rapperswil). You are welcome to arrive and take your seats from 17:00. The lecture will start at 17:15. There will be a presentation of about 60 minutes, followed by sufficient time for questions and discussion. We plan to end at around 19:15. The lecture will be in English. The lecture will be recorded, and may be made publicly available.
In case you are interested in attending, we request you to register with your email address (please input your complete email address in the "Your name" field) on the following poll by the end of Thursday 05.03.2026:

https://nuudel.digitalcourage.de/lecture-rms-ost-2026-03-09

Registration is not required to attend, but it helps us with planning and allows us to contact you in case of any changes. Any changes will also be published in the description of the poll above. The wearing of breathing masks is not obligatory, but recommended due to the speaker’s health concerns. We will make breathing masks available free of cost to those who do not have their own and would like to wear one.
I look forward to seeing you there.

Best regards,
Farhad Mehta