Richard M Stallman (RMS) is the founder of the Free Software Foundation. As explained in RMS's GNU Manifesto, "free" stands for "freedom", not price (a la Corporate America's "And you get this FREE!"); in particular, the halfpage document What is Free Software? on the GNU Home Page explains the idea.

RMS, a programming whiz (I don't like using the word 'genius' (which would probably apply here)), quit his job at the MIT AI Lab to found the Free Software Foundation and pen the GNU Manifesto.

Briefly, he quit because had he stayed, software he would develop under MIT's wing, like under a corporation, would not be available to the public, or at best available with heavy restrictions. Software copyrights have to do not only with private control and charging people as much money as "the market will bear" but also with restricting people's freedom to cooperate (as mentioned in the brief History of the GNU project , which is a good quick read before diving into the GNU Manifesto).

GNU stands for Gnu's Not Unix, which is a free -- in fact public- domain unix-compatible system. Perhaps the best place to start is the overview I wrote About Copyleft which includes a few key paragraphs quoted from the Manifesto and a few links including to the FSF's own explanation of Copyleft --Harel, Oct 1996 draft.

N O T E S (Or browse through the FSF's page on (political) philosophy of the GNU Project):

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There is a very good document about Why Software Should Not Have Owners. Critics may suggest that many of RMS's arguments here and elsewhere could be applied to private ownership of other things. Indeed many of them could. Where private control/ownership, or markets, subvert democracy and other positive human values, the former should yield, not the latter. For principled left-libertarians critics of capitalism, it is the height of irony that the features of a system which are/is are anti-democratic and counter to freedom as Communism was, are defended using those terms.

If you're a quick skimmer (I'm not) a good overview RMS's life/work is an Interview with BYTE magazine. Here and there there is some heavier technical information, but skim for the non-technical interesting parts, like: why don't we leave a free pen on every street corner?

"Copyright developed along with the printing press, and it may have been a good idea at the time because it did not restrict the freedom of the individual reader. While copying was difficult (printing presses were expensive and specialised) society was willing to abridge its freedom to copy, in order that the public could enjoy more books. But the advent of tape recorders, xerox machines, and finally the digital computer now mean that individuals should have the right to take back some of that freedom they sold away in copyright law."

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"Copyright developed along with the printing press, and it may have been a good idea at the time because it did not restrict the freedom of the individual reader. While copying was difficult (printing presses were expensive and specialised) society was willing to abridge its freedom to copy, in order that the public could enjoy more books. But the advent of tape recorders, xerox machines, and finally the digital computer now mean that individuals should have the right to take back some of that freedom they sold away in copyright law."

Article/Interview: Meeting the GNU-ru (and longer speech)
more interesting shorts here

The standard GNU Emacs distribution also includes this article on a study on rewards and motivation.

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