High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Richard Matthew Stallman (born March 16, 1953), often shortened to rms, is an American software freedom activist and computer programmer. In September 1983, he launched the GNU Project to create a free Unix-like operating system, and he has been the project`s lead architect and organizer. With the launch of the GNU Project, he initiated the free software movement; in October 1985 he founded the Free Software Foundation.