11:05 a.m., Nov. 17, 2011--Richard Stallman, the founder of the GNU Project and the Free Software Foundation, will present a visiting lecture from 7-9 p.m., Monday, Nov. 21, in Mitchell Hall at the University of Delaware.

The lecture is sponsored by the Science, Ethics and Public Policy program and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. The topic is "Copyright vs. Community in the Age of Computer Networks."

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, as well as to make changes either large or small.

The GNU/Linux system, basically the GNU operating system with Linux added, is used on tens of millions of computers today.

Stallman is careful to note the difference between the free software movement and the open source movement, likening them to different political parties. For an explanation, he refers to a GNU website.

Stallman has received the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Grace Murray Hopper Award, a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Pioneer Award and the Takeda Award for Social/Economic Betterment, as well as several honorary doctorates.