this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2025
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Bullshit (infosec.pub)
submitted 10 hours ago by Stamets@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/whitepeopletwitter@sh.itjust.works
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[–] tetris11@feddit.uk 28 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

Richard Stallman literally started the Free Software Foundation over his frustrations with a printer

https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/rms-nyu-2001-transcript.txt

Xerox gave the Artificial Intelligence Lab, where I worked, a laser printer, and this was a really handsome gift, because it was the first time anybody outside Xerox had a laser printer. And, you know, copiers jam, but there's somebody there to fix them.

Well, we had an idea for how to deal with this problem. Change it so that whenever the printer gets a jam, the machine that runs the printer can [...] tell the users who are waiting for printouts go fix the printer.

But at that point, we were completely stymied, because the software that ran that printer was not free software. It had come with the printer, and it was just a binary.

And then I heard that somebody at Carnegie Mellon University had a copy of that software. So I was visiting there later, so I went to his office and I said, "Hi, I'm from MIT. Could I have a copy of the printer source code?" And he said "No, I promised not to give you a copy." He had signed a non-disclosure agreement.

Now, this was my first, direct encounter with a non-disclosure agreement, and it taught me an important lesson -- [..] non-disclosure agreements have victims. They're not innocent. [...]

(he goes on for a bit, but ultimately describes never accepting any software that requires signing an NDA ever, and then goes on to write his own unix)