1953 New York [USA]

The MIT hacker and founder of the free software movement and the Free Software Foundation.

In 1985, Stallman published the GNU Manifesto, in which he declared his intentions and motivations for creating a free alternative to the UNIX operating system, which he called GNU (GNU Is Not Unix). He also founded the non-profit Free Software Foundation to coordinate the effort. He invented the copyleft project, which he used in the GPL license, in 1989.
Most of the GNU system, except for the kernel, was completed around the same time.
In 1991, Linus Torvalds released his Linux kernel under the terms of the GPL, completing a complete and functioning GNU system, the GNU/Linux operating system.

His converted principles have led many programmers, despite agreeing with the concept of code sharing, to create an alternative to free software: the open source movement (as opposed to free software).