Um, free software was the way of the world before Bill Gates popularized the selling of the stuff.
Stallman rose to the occasion as the defender of the "old way". He did not "invent" free software, whatever that means. (He did invent the Copyleft license, but there are many other licenses of free software besides Copyleft.)
Re:Richard Stallman: How I do my Computing
by pessimizer on Saturday April 07, 2012 @05:45PM
(#3812223)
Might have been better for me to say "a free ecosystem of legally usable source code comparable to the one a large part of the industry depends on today."
Or maybe I should have just capitalized "free."
Re:Richard Stallman: How I do my Computing
by astrodust on Sunday April 08, 2012 @05:12PM
(#3814926)
Free software in the domain of personal computers, which at the time were still hand assembled and didn't even have a functioning display, was the only way anyone knew how to do it until Bill Gates wanted money for BASIC.
IBM, of course, had been charging money for software for decades prior to that.
Re:Richard Stallman: How I do my Computing
by jongraehl on Saturday April 07, 2012 @08:02PM
(#3812526)
Given that someone already wrote something (scratching their own itch, hoped to make money but gave up, altruism), they may decide to jump from low adoption+recognition to potential ubiquity by releasing the software free for others to exploit. On the basis of individual incentive alone, this is inevitable.
Re:Richard Stallman: How I do my Computing
by tedunangst on Saturday April 07, 2012 @12:41PM
(#3811267)
I'll just mention that the MIT license is not the GPL and leave it at that. (yes, that's proof enough for me.)
I'm not smart enough to understand your comment. Are you saying that free software would have inevitably come to exist with or without Stallman? If you are, I'd say the burden of proof is on you.