Richard Matthew Stallman (born in Manhattan, New York, March 16, 1953), often abbreviated as "rms", is an American programmer and founder of the free software movement in the world.

Among his Outstanding achievements as a programmer include the realization of the GNU Emacs text editor, the GCC compiler, and the GDB debugger, under the heading of the GNU Project. However, it is primarily known for establishing a moral, political and legal framework for the free software movement, as an alternative to the development and distribution of non-free or proprietary software. He is also the inventor of the concept of copyleft (although not of the term), a method to license software in such a way that its use and modification always remain free and remain in the community.