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106-585: GDB was first written by Richard Stallman in 1986 as part of his GNU system, after his GNU Emacs was "reasonably stable". GDB is free software released under the GNU General Public License (GPL). It was modeled after the DBX debugger, which came with Berkeley Unix distributions. From 1990 to 1993 it was maintained by John Gilmore . Now it is maintained by the GDB Steering Committee which

212-578: A command-line interface , although it does contain a text user interface . Several front-ends have been built for it, such as UltraGDB , Xxgdb , Data Display Debugger (DDD), Nemiver , KDbg , the Xcode debugger, GDBtk/Insight, Gede [1] , Seer [2] , and HP Wildebeest Debugger GUI (WDB GUI). IDEs such as Codelite , Code::Blocks , Dev-C++ , Geany , GNAT Programming Studio (GPS), KDevelop , Qt Creator , Lazarus , MonoDevelop , Eclipse , NetBeans , and Visual Studio can interface with GDB. GNU Emacs has

318-476: A "GUD mode" and tools for Vim exist (e.g. clewn). These offer facilities similar to debuggers found in IDEs. Some other debugging tools have been designed to work with GDB, such as memory leak detectors. GDB uses a system call named ptrace (the name is an abbreviation of "process trace") to observe and control the execution of another process, and examine and change the process' memory and registers. A breakpoint

424-470: A GUI and some level of a CLI, although the GUIs usually receive more attention. GUI wrappers find a way around the command-line interface versions (CLI) of (typically) Linux and Unix-like software applications and their text-based UIs or typed command labels. While command-line or text-based applications allow users to run a program non-interactively, GUI wrappers atop them avoid the steep learning curve of

530-408: A big step backward with respect to paper books by being less easy to use, copy, lend to others or sell, also mentioning that Amazon e-books cannot be bought anonymously. His short story " The Right to Read " provides a picture of a dystopian future if the right to share books is impeded. He objects to many of the terms within typical end-user license agreements that accompany e-books. He discourages

636-400: A cell phone due to the lack of phones running entirely on free software. He also avoids using a key card to enter his office building since key card systems track each location and time that someone enters the building using a card. He usually does not browse the web directly from his personal computer. Instead, he uses GNU Womb's grab-url-from-mail utility, an email-based proxy which downloads

742-410: A combination of technologies and devices to provide a platform that users can interact with, for the tasks of gathering and producing information. A series of elements conforming a visual language have evolved to represent information stored in computers. This makes it easier for people with few computer skills to work with and use computer software. The most common combination of such elements in GUIs

848-432: A debugging session to step backward, much like rewinding a crashed program to see what happened — is available. GDB offers a "remote" mode often used when debugging embedded systems. Remote operation is when GDB runs on one machine and the program being debugged runs on another. GDB can communicate to the remote "stub" that understands GDB protocol through a serial device or TCP/IP. A stub program can be created by linking to

954-518: A doctorate in physics for one year, but left the program to focus on his programming at the MIT AI Laboratory . While working (starting in 1975) as a research assistant at MIT under Gerry Sussman , Stallman published a paper (with Sussman) in 1977 on an AI truth maintenance system , called dependency-directed backtracking . The paper was an early work on the problem of intelligent backtracking in constraint satisfaction problems . As of 2009 ,

1060-449: A fellow AI Lab hacker, founded Lisp Machines, Inc. (LMI) to market Lisp machines , which he and Tom Knight designed at the lab. Greenblatt rejected outside investment, believing that the proceeds from the construction and sale of a few machines could be profitably reinvested in the growth of the company. In contrast, the other hackers felt that the venture capital -funded approach was better. As no agreement could be reached, hackers from

1166-505: A grid of items with rows of text extending sideways from the icon. Multi-row and multi-column layouts commonly found on the web are "shelf" and "waterfall". The former is found on image search engines , where images appear with a fixed height but variable length, and is typically implemented with the CSS property and parameter display: inline-block; . A waterfall layout found on Imgur and TweetDeck with fixed width but variable height per item

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1272-700: A judge would ask whether it was "really" one program, rather than how the parts were labeled. Therefore, Stallman sent a message back to Jobs which said they believed Jobs' plan was not allowed by the GPL, which resulted in NeXT releasing the Objective-C front end under GPL. For a period of time, Stallman used a notebook from the One Laptop per Child program. Stallman's computer is a refurbished ThinkPad X200 with Libreboot (a free BIOS replacement), and Trisquel GNU/Linux . Before

1378-405: A modified GCC in two parts, one part under GPL and the other part, an Objective-C preprocessor under a proprietary license. Stallman initially thought this would be legal, but since he also thought it would be "very undesirable for free software", he asked a lawyer for advice. The response he got was that judges would consider such schemes to be "subterfuges" and would be very harsh toward them, and

1484-453: A password control system in 1977, Stallman found a way to decrypt the passwords and sent users messages containing their decoded password, with a suggestion to change it to the empty string (that is, no password) instead, to re-enable anonymous access to the systems. Around 20 percent of the users followed his advice at the time, although passwords ultimately prevailed. Stallman boasted of the success of his campaign for many years afterward. In

1590-506: A program was busy. Additionally, it was the first GUI to introduce something resembling Virtual Desktops . Windows 95 , accompanied by an extensive marketing campaign, was a major success in the marketplace at launch and shortly became the most popular desktop operating system. In 2007, with the iPhone and later in 2010 with the introduction of the iPad , Apple popularized the post-WIMP style of interaction for multi-touch screens, and those devices were considered to be milestones in

1696-474: A retail store, airline self-ticket and check-in, information kiosks in a public space, like a train station or a museum, and monitors or control screens in an embedded industrial application which employ a real-time operating system (RTOS). Cell phones and handheld game systems also employ application specific touchscreen GUIs. Newer automobiles use GUIs in their navigation systems and multimedia centers, or navigation multimedia center combinations. A GUI uses

1802-414: A short sequence of words and symbols. Custom functions may be used to facilitate access to frequent actions. Command-line interfaces are more lightweight , as they only recall information necessary for a task; for example, no preview thumbnails or graphical rendering of web pages. This allows greater efficiency and productivity once many commands are learned. But reaching this level takes some time because

1908-489: A summer camp, he read manuals for the IBM 7094 . From 1967 to 1969, Stallman attended a Columbia University Saturday program for high school students. He was also a volunteer laboratory assistant in the biology department at Rockefeller University . Although he was interested in mathematics and physics , his supervising professor at Rockefeller thought he showed promise as a biologist. His first experience with actual computers

2014-428: A system or moved about to different places during redesigns. Also, icons and dialog boxes are usually harder for users to script. WIMPs extensively use modes , as the meaning of all keys and clicks on specific positions on the screen are redefined all the time. Command-line interfaces use modes only in limited forms, such as for current directory and environment variables . Most modern operating systems provide both

2120-592: A text editor in APL and a preprocessor for the PL/I programming language on the IBM System/360 . As a first-year student at Harvard University in fall 1970, Stallman was known for his strong performance in Math 55 . He was happy, "For the first time in my life, I felt I had found a home at Harvard." In 1971, near the end of his first year at Harvard, he became a programmer at

2226-404: A user when the person's job was printed, and would message all logged-in users waiting for print jobs if the printer was jammed. Not being able to add these features to the new printer was a major inconvenience, as the printer was on a different floor from most of the users. This experience convinced Stallman of people's need to be able to freely modify the software they use. Richard Greenblatt ,

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2332-452: A world of spin-meisters and multimillion-dollar marketing campaigns. In 2018, Stallman instituted "Kind Communication Guidelines" for the GNU project to help its mailing list discussions remain constructive while avoiding explicitly promoting diversity. In October 2019, a public statement signed by 33 maintainers of the GNU project asserted that Stallman's behaviour had "undermined a core value of

2438-658: Is a crime, not the issue of charging for software. Stallman's texinfo is a GPL replacement, loosely based on Scribe; the original version was finished in 1986. In 1980, Stallman and some other hackers at the AI Lab were refused access to the source code for the software of a newly installed laser printer , the Xerox 9700 . Stallman had modified the software for the Lab's previous laser printer (the XGP, Xerographic Printer), so it electronically messaged

2544-552: Is a development model." Thus, he believes that the use of the term will not inform people of the freedom issues, and will not lead to people valuing and defending their freedom. Two alternatives which Stallman does accept are software libre and unfettered software , but free software is the term he asks people to use in English. For similar reasons, he argues for the term proprietary software or non-free software rather than closed-source software , when referring to software that

2650-664: Is a related technology that promises to deliver the representation benefits of 3D environments without their usability drawbacks of orientation problems and hidden objects. In 2006, Hillcrest Labs introduced the first ZUI for television. Other innovations include the menus on the PlayStation 2 , the menus on the Xbox , Sun's Project Looking Glass , Metisse , which was similar to Project Looking Glass, BumpTop , where users can manipulate documents and windows with realistic movement and physics as if they were physical documents, Croquet OS , which

2756-694: Is an American free software movement activist and programmer . He campaigns for software to be distributed in such a manner that its users have the freedom to use, study, distribute, and modify that software. Software which ensures these freedoms is termed free software . Stallman launched the GNU Project , founded the Free Software Foundation (FSF) in October 1985, developed the GNU Compiler Collection and GNU Emacs , and wrote all versions of

2862-610: Is appointed by the Free Software Foundation . GDB offers extensive facilities for tracing and altering the execution of computer programs . The user can monitor and modify the values of programs' internal variables , and even call functions independently of the program's normal behavior. GDB target processors (as of 2003) include: Alpha , ARM , AVR , H8/300 , Altera Nios / Nios II , System/370 , System 390 , X86 and its 64-bit extension X86-64 , IA-64 "Itanium", Motorola 68000 , MIPS , PA-RISC , PowerPC , SuperH , SPARC , and VAX . Lesser-known target processors supported in

2968-453: Is associated with proponents of strong copyright), or a convenient anonymous micropayment system for people to support authors directly. He indicates that no form of non-commercial sharing of copies should be considered a copyright violation. He has advocated for civil disobedience in a comment on Ley Sinde . He has reportedly refused to autograph anything bearing a '©' symbol, in line with his views. Stallman has helped and supported

3074-515: Is best summed up by the FSF Defective by Design campaign. In the talks, he makes proposals for a "reduced copyright" and suggests a 10-year limit on copyright. He suggests that, instead of restrictions on sharing, authors be supported using a tax, with revenues distributed among them based on cubic roots of their popularity to ensure that "fairly successful non-stars" receive a greater share than they do now (compare with private copying levy which

3180-417: Is especially common with applications designed for Unix-like operating systems. The latter used to be implemented first because it allowed the developers to focus exclusively on their product's functionality without bothering about interface details such as designing icons and placing buttons. Designing programs this way also allows users to run the program in a shell script . Many environments and games use

3286-481: Is implemented by replacing an instruction at a given memory address with another special instruction. Executing breakpoint instruction causes SIGTRAP. Consider the following source-code written in C : Using the GCC compiler on Linux , the code above must be compiled using the -g flag in order to include appropriate debug information on the binary generated, thus making it possible to inspect it using GDB. Assuming that

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3392-473: Is not free software. Stallman asks that the term GNU/Linux , which he pronounces / ɡ n uː s l æ ʃ ˈ l ɪ n ə k s / GNOO SLASH LIN -əks , be used to refer to the operating system created by combining the GNU system and the kernel Linux. Stallman refers to this operating system as "a variant of GNU, and the GNU Project is its principal developer". He claims that the connection between

3498-453: Is often incorrectly attributed to him, and Stallman argues that this is a misstatement of his philosophy. He argues that freedom is vital for the sake of users and society as a moral value , and not merely for pragmatic reasons such as possibly developing technically superior software. Eric S. Raymond , one of the creators of the open-source movement , argues that moral arguments, rather than pragmatic ones, alienate potential allies and hurt

3604-655: Is represented by rotating a cube with faces representing each user's workspace, and window management is represented via a Rolodex -style flipping mechanism in Windows Vista (see Windows Flip 3D ). In both cases, the operating system transforms windows on-the-fly while continuing to update the content of those windows. The GUI is usually WIMP-based, although occasionally other metaphors surface, such as those used in Microsoft Bob , 3dwm, File System Navigator, File System Visualizer , 3D Mailbox, and GopherVR . Zooming (ZUI)

3710-440: Is the windows, icons, text fields, canvases, menus, pointer ( WIMP ) paradigm, especially in personal computers . The WIMP style of interaction uses a virtual input device to represent the position of a pointing device's interface , most often a mouse , and presents information organized in windows and represented with icons . Available commands are compiled together in menus, and actions are performed making gestures with

3816-551: Is usually implemented by specifying column-width: . Smaller app mobile devices such as personal digital assistants (PDAs) and smartphones typically use the WIMP elements with different unifying metaphors, due to constraints in space and available input devices. Applications for which WIMP is not well suited may use newer interaction techniques , collectively termed post-WIMP UIs. As of 2011, some touchscreen-based operating systems such as Apple's iOS ( iPhone ) and Android use

3922-589: The GNU General Public License . Stallman launched the GNU Project in September 1983 to write a Unix-like computer operating system composed entirely of free software. With that he also launched the free software movement. He has been the GNU project's lead architect and organizer, and developed a number of pieces of widely used GNU software including among others, the GNU Compiler Collection, GNU Debugger , and GNU Emacs text editor. Stallman pioneered

4028-521: The GNU Manifesto , which outlined his motivation for creating a free operating system called GNU, which would be compatible with Unix . The name GNU is a recursive acronym for "GNU's Not Unix". Soon after, he started a nonprofit corporation called the Free Software Foundation to employ free software programmers and provide a legal infrastructure for the free software movement. Stallman was

4134-574: The International Music Score Library Project get back online, after it had been taken down on October 19, 2007, following a cease and desist letter from Universal Edition . Stallman mentions the dangers some e-books bring compared to paper books, with the example of the Amazon Kindle e-reader that prevents the copying of e-books and allows Amazon to order automatic deletion of a book. He says that such e-books present

4240-567: The Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking scandal. Stallman remained head of the GNU Project, and in 2021 returned to the FSF board of directors and others. Stallman was born March 16, 1953 in New York City , to a family of Jewish heritage. He had a troublesome relationship with his parents and did not feel he had a proper home. He was interested in computers at a young age; when he was a pre-teen at

4346-646: The Lisp machine operating system (the CONS of 1974–1976 and the CADR of 1977–1979—this latter unit was commercialized by Symbolics and Lisp Machines , Inc. (LMI) starting around 1980). He became an ardent critic of restricted computer access in the lab, which at that time was funded primarily by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency ( DARPA ). When MIT's Laboratory for Computer Science (LCS) installed

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4452-580: The MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory , and became a regular in the hacker community, where he was usually known by his initials, RMS , which he used in his computer accounts. Stallman received a bachelor's degree in physics ( magna cum laude ) from Harvard in 1974. He considered staying on at Harvard, but instead decided to enroll as a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He pursued

4558-681: The Xerox Star . These early systems spurred many other GUI efforts, including Lisp machines by Symbolics and other manufacturers, the Apple Lisa (which presented the concept of menu bar and window controls ) in 1983, the Apple Macintosh 128K in 1984, and the Atari ST with Digital Research 's GEM , and Commodore Amiga in 1985. Visi On was released in 1983 for the IBM PC compatible computers, but

4664-498: The cursor (or rather pointer ) control: mouse , pointing stick , touchpad , trackball , joystick , virtual keyboards , and head-up displays (translucent information devices at the eye level). There are also actions performed by programs that affect the GUI. For example, there are components like inotify or D-Bus to facilitate communication between computer programs. Ivan Sutherland developed Sketchpad in 1963, widely held as

4770-616: The 1970s, Engelbart's ideas were further refined and extended to graphics by researchers at Xerox PARC and specifically Alan Kay , who went beyond text-based hyperlinks and used a GUI as the main interface for the Smalltalk programming language , which ran on the Xerox Alto computer , released in 1973. Most modern general-purpose GUIs are derived from this system. The Xerox PARC GUI consisted of graphical elements such as windows , menus , radio buttons , and check boxes . The concept of icons

4876-434: The FSF call it GNU/Linux . This has been a longstanding naming controversy in the free software community. Stallman argues that not using GNU in the name of the operating system unfairly disparages the value of the GNU project and harms the sustainability of the free software movement by breaking the link between the software and the free software philosophy of the GNU project. Stallman's influences on hacker culture include

4982-438: The GNU project's philosophy and its software is broken when people refer to the combination as merely Linux. Starting around 2003, he began also using the term GNU+Linux , which he pronounces / ɡ n uː p l ʌ s ˈ l ɪ n ə k s / GNOO PLUS LIN -əks , to prevent others from pronouncing the phrase GNU/Linux as / ɡ n uː ˈ l ɪ n ə k s / GNOO LIN -əks , which would erroneously imply that

5088-469: The GNU project: the empowerment of all computer users" and called for "GNU maintainers to collectively decide about the organization of the project". The statement was published soon after Stallman resigned as president of the FSF and left his "visiting scientist" role at MIT in September 2019. In spite of that, Stallman remained head of the GNU project. Stallman has written many essays on software freedom, and has been an outspoken political campaigner for

5194-407: The GNU system had been completed. Stallman was responsible for contributing many necessary tools, including a text editor ( GNU Emacs ), compiler ( GCC ), debugger ( GNU Debugger ), and a build automator ( GNU make ). The notable omission was a kernel . In 1990, members of the GNU project began using Carnegie Mellon's Mach microkernel in a project called GNU Hurd , which has yet to achieve

5300-506: The GUIs advantages, many reviewers questioned the value of the entire concept, citing hardware limits, and problems in finding compatible software. In 1984, Apple released a television commercial which introduced the Apple Macintosh during the telecast of Super Bowl XVIII by CBS , with allusions to George Orwell 's noted novel Nineteen Eighty-Four . The goal of the commercial was to make people think about computers, identifying

5406-680: The ThinkPad X200, Stallman used a Thinkpad T400s with Libreboot and Trisquel GNU/Linux. And before the T400s, Stallman used a ThinkPad X60, and even further back in time, a Lemote Yeeloong netbook (using the same company's Loongson processor) which he chose because, like the X200, X60 and the T400s, it could run with free software at the BIOS level, stating "freedom is my priority. I've campaigned for freedom since 1983, and I am not going to surrender that freedom for

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5512-483: The United States government may encourage the use of software as a service because this would allow them to access users' data without needing a search warrant . He denies being an anarchist despite his wariness of some legislation and the fact that he has "advocated strongly for user privacy and his own view of software freedom". Stallman places great importance on the words and labels people use to talk about

5618-502: The appropriate stub files provided with GDB, which implement the target side of the communication protocol. Alternatively, gdbserver can be used to remotely debug the program without needing to change it in any way. The same mode is also used by KGDB for debugging a running Linux kernel on the source level with gdb. With KGDB, kernel developers can debug a kernel in much the same way as they debug application programs. It makes it possible to place breakpoints in kernel code, step through

5724-401: The class of GUIs named post-WIMP. These support styles of interaction using more than one finger in contact with a display, which allows actions such as pinching and rotating, which are unsupported by one pointer and mouse. Human interface devices , for the efficient interaction with a GUI include a computer keyboard , especially used together with keyboard shortcuts , pointing devices for

5830-503: The code, and observe variables. On architectures where hardware debugging registers are available, watchpoints can be set which trigger breakpoints when specified memory addresses are executed or accessed. KGDB requires an additional machine which is connected to the machine to be debugged using a serial cable or Ethernet . On FreeBSD , it is also possible to debug using FireWire direct memory access (DMA). The debugger does not contain its own graphical user interface , and defaults to

5936-457: The command words may not be easily discoverable or mnemonic . Also, using the command line can become slow and error-prone when users must enter long commands comprising many parameters or several different filenames at once. However, windows, icons, menus, pointer ( WIMP ) interfaces present users with many widgets that represent and can trigger some of the system's available commands. GUIs can be made quite hard when dialogs are buried deep in

6042-413: The command-line, which requires commands to be typed on the keyboard . By starting a GUI wrapper, users can intuitively interact with, start, stop, and change its working parameters, through graphical icons and visual indicators of a desktop environment , for example. Applications may also provide both interfaces, and when they do the GUI is usually a WIMP wrapper around the command-line version. This

6148-723: The concept of copyleft , which uses the principles of copyright law to preserve the right to use, modify, and distribute free software. He is the main author of free software licenses which describe those terms, most notably the GNU General Public License (GPL), the most widely used free software license. In 1989, he co-founded the League for Programming Freedom . Since the mid-1990s, Stallman has spent most of his time advocating for free software, as well as campaigning against software patents , digital rights management (which he refers to as digital restrictions management, calling

6254-571: The designer's work to change the interface as user needs evolve. Good GUI design relates to users more, and to system architecture less. Large widgets, such as windows , usually provide a frame or container for the main presentation content such as a web page, email message, or drawing. Smaller ones usually act as a user-input tool. A GUI may be designed for the requirements of a vertical market as application-specific GUIs. Examples include automated teller machines (ATM), point of sale (POS) touchscreens at restaurants, self-service checkouts used in

6360-485: The development of mobile devices . The GUIs familiar to most people as of the mid-late 2010s are Microsoft Windows , macOS , and the X Window System interfaces for desktop and laptop computers, and Android , Apple's iOS , Symbian , BlackBerry OS , Windows Phone / Windows 10 Mobile , Tizen , WebOS , and Firefox OS for handheld ( smartphone ) devices. Since the commands available in command line interfaces can be many, complex operations can be performed using

6466-435: The display represents a desktop, on which documents and folders of documents can be placed. Window managers and other software combine to simulate the desktop environment with varying degrees of realism. Entries may appear in a list to make space for text and details, or in a grid for compactness and larger icons with little space underneath for text. Variations in between exist, such as a list with multiple columns of items and

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6572-549: The end goal of removing code secrecy. In February 1984, Stallman quit his job at MIT to work full-time on the GNU project, which he had announced in September 1983. Since then, he had remained affiliated with MIT as an unpaid "visiting scientist" in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory . Until "around 1998", he maintained an office at the Institute that doubled as his legal residence. Stallman announced

6678-443: The file containing the code above is named example.c , the command for the compilation could be: And the binary can now be run: Since the example code, when executed, generates a segmentation fault , GDB can be used to inspect the problem. The problem is present in line 7, and occurs when calling the function strlen (because its argument, s , is NULL ). Depending on the implementation of strlen ( inline or not),

6784-593: The first graphical computer-aided design program. It used a light pen to create and manipulate objects in engineering drawings in realtime with coordinated graphics. In the late 1960s, researchers at the Stanford Research Institute , led by Douglas Engelbart , developed the On-Line System (NLS), which used text-based hyperlinks manipulated with a then-new device: the mouse . (A 1968 demonstration of NLS became known as " The Mother of All Demos ".) In

6890-523: The free software movement since the early 1990s. The speeches he has regularly given are titled The GNU Project and the Free Software Movement , The Dangers of Software Patents , and Copyright and Community in the Age of Computer Networks . In 2006 and 2007, during the eighteen month public consultation for the drafting of version 3 of the GNU General Public License, he added a fourth topic explaining

6996-566: The government of the Indian State of Kerala , he persuaded officials to discard proprietary software, such as Microsoft's, at state-run schools. This has resulted in a landmark decision to switch all school computers in 12,500 high schools from Windows to a free software operating system. After personal meetings, Stallman obtained positive statements about the free software movement from the then-president of India, A. P. J. Abdul Kalam , French 2007 presidential candidate Ségolène Royal , and

7102-415: The importance of terminology, are a source of regular misunderstanding and friction with parts of the free software and open-source communities . After initially accepting the concept, Stallman rejects a common alternative term , open-source software , because it does not call to mind what Stallman sees as the value of the software: freedom . He wrote, "Free software is a political movement; open source

7208-420: The inaccurate wording. Minsky was not accused of "assault", and from the victims' testimonies it was not clear whether Minsky had committed "assault", and Stallman argued that "the most plausible scenario is that she presented herself to him as entirely willing. Assuming she was being coerced by Epstein, he would have had every reason to conceal that from most of his associates". When challenged by other members of

7314-485: The interface found in current versions of Microsoft Windows, and in various desktop environments for Unix-like operating systems , such as macOS and Linux . Thus most current GUIs have largely common idioms. GUIs were a hot topic in the early 1980s. The Apple Lisa was released in 1983, and various windowing systems existed for DOS operating systems (including PC GEM and PC/GEOS ). Individual applications for many platforms presented their own GUI variants. Despite

7420-518: The kernel Linux is maintained by the GNU project. The creator of Linux, Linus Torvalds , has publicly said that he objects to modification of the name and that the rename "is their [the FSF ] confusion not ours". Stallman professes admiration for Julian Assange and Edward Snowden . He has spoken against government and corporate surveillance on many occasions. He refers to mobile phones as "portable surveillance and tracking devices ", refusing to own

7526-413: The kind of data they hold. The widgets of a well-designed interface are selected to support the actions necessary to achieve the goals of users. A model–view–controller allows flexible structures in which the interface is independent of and indirectly linked to application functions, so the GUI can be customized easily. This allows users to select or design a different skin or theme at will, and eases

7632-588: The lab's community. For two years, from 1982 to the end of 1983, Stallman worked by himself to clone the output of the Symbolics programmers, with the aim of preventing them from gaining a monopoly on the lab's computers. Stallman argues that software users should have the freedom to share with their neighbors and be able to study and make changes to the software that they use. He maintains that attempts by proprietary software vendors to prohibit these acts are antisocial and unethical. The phrase "software wants to be free"

7738-421: The late 1970s and early 1980s, the hacker culture which Stallman thrived on began to fragment. To prevent software from being used on their competitors' computers, most manufacturers stopped distributing source code and began using copyright and restrictive software licenses to limit or prohibit copying and redistribution. Such proprietary software had existed before, and it became apparent that it would become

7844-403: The latter camp founded Symbolics , with the aid of Russ Noftsker , an AI Lab administrator. Symbolics recruited most of the remaining hackers including notable hacker Bill Gosper , who then left the AI Lab. Symbolics also forced Greenblatt to resign by citing MIT policies. While both companies delivered proprietary software, Stallman believed that LMI, unlike Symbolics, had tried to avoid hurting

7950-708: The mailing list, he added "It is morally absurd to define 'rape' in a way that depends on minor details such as which country it was in or whether the victim was 18 years old or 17 ", holding that it was not relevant to the harm that was done to the victim. Graphical user interface A graphical user interface , or GUI ( / ˈ ɡ uː i / GOO -ee ), is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and visual indicators such as secondary notation . In many applications, GUIs are used instead of text-based UIs , which are based on typed command labels or text navigation. GUIs were introduced in reaction to

8056-402: The maturity level required for full POSIX compliance. In 1991, Linus Torvalds , a Finnish student, used the GNU's development tools to produce the free monolithic Linux kernel . The existing programs from the GNU project were readily ported to run on the resultant platform. Most sources use the name Linux to refer to the general-purpose operating system thus formed, while Stallman and

8162-649: The means of inviting the public to contribute articles. The resulting GNUPedia was eventually retired in favour of the emerging Misplaced Pages , which had similar aims and was enjoying greater success. Stallman was on the Advisory Council of Latin American television station teleSUR from its launch but resigned in February 2011, criticizing pro-Gaddafi propaganda during the Arab Spring . In August 2006, at his meetings with

8268-435: The methods of 3D graphics to project 3D GUI objects onto the screen. The use of 3D graphics has become increasingly common in mainstream operating systems (ex. Windows Aero , and Aqua (MacOS)) to create attractive interfaces, termed eye candy (which includes, for example, the use of drop shadows underneath windows and the cursor ), or for functional purposes only possible using three dimensions. For example, user switching

8374-467: The more common term misleading), and other legal and technical systems which he sees as taking away users' freedoms. That includes software license agreements , non-disclosure agreements , activation keys , dongles , copy restriction , proprietary formats , and binary executables without source code . In September 2019, Stallman resigned as president of the FSF and left his visiting scientist role at MIT after making controversial comments about

8480-580: The name POSIX and the Emacs editor. On Unix systems, GNU Emacs's popularity rivaled that of another editor vi , spawning an editor war . Stallman's take on this was to canonize himself as St. IGNUcius of the Church of Emacs and acknowledge that "vi vi vi is the editor of the beast ", while "using a free version of vi is not a sin ; it is a penance ". In 1992, developers at Lucid Inc. doing their own work on Emacs clashed with Stallman and ultimately forked

8586-555: The nonsalaried president of the FSF, which is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded in Massachusetts . Stallman popularized the concept of copyleft , a legal mechanism to protect the modification and redistribution rights for free software. It was first implemented in the GNU Emacs General Public License, and in 1989 the first program-independent GNU General Public License (GPL) was released. By then, much of

8692-536: The norm. This shift in the legal characteristics of software was a consequence triggered by the US Copyright Act of 1976 . When Brian Reid in 1979 placed time bombs in the Scribe markup language and word processing system to restrict unlicensed access to the software, Stallman proclaimed it "a crime against humanity". During an interview in 2008, he clarified that it is blocking the user's freedom that he believes

8798-535: The output can be different, e.g.: To fix the problem, the variable a (in the function main ) must contain a valid string. Here is a fixed version of the code: Recompiling and running the executable again inside GDB now gives a correct result: GDB prints the output of printf in the screen, and then informs the user that the program exited normally. Richard Stallman Richard Matthew Stallman ( / ˈ s t ɔː l m ən / STAWL -mən ; born March 16, 1953), also known by his initials, rms ,

8904-680: The perceived steep learning curve of command-line interfaces (CLIs), which require commands to be typed on a computer keyboard . The actions in a GUI are usually performed through direct manipulation of the graphical elements. Beyond computers, GUIs are used in many handheld mobile devices such as MP3 players, portable media players, gaming devices, smartphones and smaller household, office and industrial controls . The term GUI tends not to be applied to other lower- display resolution types of interfaces , such as video games (where head-up displays ( HUDs ) are preferred), or not including flat screens like volumetric displays because

9010-532: The plan for the GNU operating system in September 1983 on several ARPANET mailing lists and USENET . He started the project on his own and describes: "As an operating system developer, I had the right skills for this job. So even though I could not take success for granted, I realized that I was elected to do the job. I chose to make the system compatible with Unix so that it would be portable, and so that Unix users could easily switch to it." In 1985, Stallman published

9116-403: The pointing device. A window manager facilitates the interactions between windows, applications , and the windowing system . The windowing system handles hardware devices such as pointing devices, graphics hardware, and positioning of the pointer. In personal computers , all these elements are modeled through a desktop metaphor to produce a simulation called a desktop environment in which

9222-418: The police being called. AMD has since acquired ATI and has taken steps to make their hardware documentation available for use by the free software community. Stallman has characterized Steve Jobs as having a "malign influence" on computing because of Jobs' leadership in guiding Apple to produce closed platforms . According to Stallman, while Jobs was at NeXT , Jobs asked Stallman if he could distribute

9328-447: The president of Ecuador Rafael Correa . Stallman has participated in protests about software patents, digital rights management , and proprietary software . Protesting against proprietary software in April 2006, Stallman held a "Don't buy from ATI , enemy of your freedom" placard at an invited talk given by an ATI compiler architect in the building where Stallman worked, resulting in

9434-488: The proposed changes. Stallman's staunch advocacy for free software inspired the creation of the Virtual Richard M. Stallman ( vrms ), software that analyzes the packages currently installed on a Debian GNU/Linux system, and reports those that are from the non-free tree. Stallman disagrees with parts of Debian's definition of free software. In 1999, Stallman called for development of a free online encyclopedia through

9540-460: The sake of a more convenient computer." Stallman's Lemote was stolen from him in 2012 while he was in Argentina. Before Trisquel, Stallman has used the gNewSense operating system. Stallman has regularly given a talk entitled "Copyright vs. Community" where he reviews the state of digital rights management (DRM) and names many of the products and corporations which he boycotts. His approach to DRM

9646-495: The software into what would become XEmacs . The technology journalist Andrew Leonard has characterized what he sees as Stallman's uncompromising stubbornness as common among elite computer programmers: There's something comforting about Stallman's intransigence. Win or lose, Stallman will never give up. He'll be the stubbornest mule on the farm until the day he dies. Call it fixity of purpose, or just plain cussedness, his single-minded commitment and brutal honesty are refreshing in

9752-590: The standard release have included A29K , ARC , ETRAX CRIS , D10V , D30V , FR-30 , FR-V , Intel i960 , 68HC11 , Motorola 88000 , MCORE , MN10200 , MN10300 , NS32K , Stormy16 , and Z8000 . (Newer releases will likely not support some of these.) GDB has compiled-in simulators for even lesser-known target processors such like M32R or V850 . GDB is still actively being developed. As of version 7.0 new features include support for Python scripting and as of version 7.8 GNU Guile scripting as well. Since version 7.0, support for "reversible debugging" — allowing

9858-509: The system never reached commercial production. The first commercially available computer with a GUI was the 1979 PERQ workstation , manufactured by Three Rivers Computer Corporation. Its design was heavily influenced by the work at Xerox PARC. In 1981, Xerox eventually commercialized the ideas from the Alto in the form of a new and enhanced system – the Xerox 8010 Information System – more commonly known as

9964-540: The technique Stallman and Sussman introduced is still the most general and powerful form of intelligent backtracking. The technique of constraint recording , wherein partial results of a search are recorded for later reuse, was also introduced in this paper. As a hacker in MIT's AI laboratory, Stallman worked on software projects like TECO and Emacs for the Incompatible Timesharing System (ITS), as well as

10070-570: The term intellectual property is designed to confuse people, and is used to prevent intelligent discussion on the specifics of copyright , patent , trademark , and other areas of law by lumping together things that are more dissimilar than similar. He also argues that by referring to these laws as property laws, the term biases the discussion when thinking about how to treat these issues, writing: These laws originated separately, evolved differently, cover different activities, have different rules, and raise different public policy issues. Copyright law

10176-492: The term is restricted to the scope of 2D display screens able to describe generic information, in the tradition of the computer science research at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center . Designing the visual composition and temporal behavior of a GUI is an important part of software application programming in the area of human–computer interaction . Its goal is to enhance the efficiency and ease of use for

10282-456: The underlying logical design of a stored program , a design discipline named usability . Methods of user-centered design are used to ensure that the visual language introduced in the design is well-tailored to the tasks. The visible graphical interface features of an application are sometimes referred to as chrome or GUI . Typically, users interact with information by manipulating visual widgets that allow for interactions appropriate to

10388-531: The use of several storage technologies such as DVD or Blu-ray video discs because the content of such media is encrypted. He considers manufacturers' use of encryption on non-secret data ( to force the user to view certain promotional material ) as a conspiracy. Stallman recognized the Sony BMG copy protection rootkit scandal to be a criminal act by Sony and supports a general boycott of Sony for its legal actions against George Hotz . Stallman has suggested that

10494-466: The user-friendly interface as a personal computer which departed from prior business-oriented systems, and becoming a signature representation of Apple products. In 1985, Commodore released the Amiga 1000 , along with Workbench and Kickstart 1.0 (which contained Intuition ). This interface ran as a separate task, meaning it was very responsive and, unlike other GUIs of the time, it didn't freeze up when

10600-439: The webpage content and then emails it to the user. More recently, he said that he accesses all websites via Tor , except for Misplaced Pages (which generally disallows editing from Tor unless users have an IP block exemption ). In September 2019, it was learned that Jeffrey Epstein had made donations to MIT, and in the wake of this, MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito resigned. An internal MIT CSAIL listserv mailing list thread

10706-401: The world, including the relationship between software and freedom. He asks people to say free software and GNU/Linux , and to avoid the terms intellectual property and piracy (in relation to copying not approved by the publisher). One of his criteria for giving an interview to a journalist is that the journalist agrees to use his terminology throughout the article. Stallman argues that

10812-521: Was at the IBM New York Scientific Center when he was in high school. He was hired for the summer in 1970 after his senior year of high school, to write a numerical analysis program in Fortran . He completed the task after a couple of weeks ("I swore that I would never use FORTRAN again because I despised it as a language compared with other languages") and spent the rest of the summer writing

10918-490: Was designed to promote authorship and art, and covers the details of a work of authorship or art. Patent law was intended to encourage publication of ideas, at the price of finite monopolies over these ideas–a price that may be worth paying in some fields and not in others. Trademark law was not intended to promote any business activity, but simply to enable buyers to know what they are buying. His requests that people use certain terms, and his ongoing efforts to convince people of

11024-399: Was later introduced by David Canfield Smith , who had written a thesis on the subject under the guidance of Kay. The PARC GUI employs a pointing device along with a keyboard. These aspects can be emphasized by using the alternative term and acronym for windows, icons, menus, pointing device ( WIMP ). This effort culminated in the 1973 Xerox Alto , the first computer with a GUI, though

11130-574: Was never popular due to its high hardware demands. Nevertheless, it was a crucial influence on the contemporary development of Microsoft Windows . Apple, Digital Research, IBM and Microsoft used many of Xerox's ideas to develop products, and IBM's Common User Access specifications formed the basis of the GUIs used in Microsoft Windows, IBM OS/2 Presentation Manager , and the Unix Motif toolkit and window manager . These ideas evolved to create

11236-560: Was started to protest the coverup of MIT's connections to Epstein. In the thread, discussion had turned to deceased MIT professor Marvin Minsky , who was named by Virginia Giuffre as one of the people that Epstein had forced her to have sex with. Giuffre, a minor at the time, had been caught in Epstein's underage sex trafficking ring. In response to a comment saying that Minsky "is accused of assaulting one of Epstein's victims", Stallman objected to

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