Check out Declan McCullagh's article at http://cgi.pathfinder.com/netly/opinion/0,1042,1754,00.html " by Declan McCullagh February 20, 1998 Richard Stallman is nothing if not determined. For over two decades this bristly MIT geek has championed an arcane cause: free computer programs. Stallman wants you to have the right to twiddle your software -- to be able to add features, rewrite it and, if you can figure out how, teach it get down and do the fandango. Last month Netscape endorsed Stallman's idea by deciding to open the lid to its software toolbox and encouraging any interested programmer to tinker with it. Yesterday Stallman won an award from the Electronic Frontier Foundation for his efforts, including writing the popular (and, of course, free) EMACS text editor. "I was trying to give people freedom," he said during the ceremony at the Computers, Freedom and Privacy (CFP) conference. Stallman is the type of fellow who frequents CFP, an annual event that brings together academics, government officials and Pilot-toting bitheads. Sparring is commonplace. Lawyers from the ACLU and the Center for Democracy and Technology shouted at each other yesterday morning when debating whether to cut deals on legislation in Congress. Former FTC commissioner Christine Varney said that the government should regulate corporations' privacy practices, and Solveig Singleton from the Cato Institute argued on a panel that the private sector should (not that I'm biased or anything). But the folks who trekked to Austin, Texas, this week generally share a common goal: preserving the unique culture of the Internet."