"In my first year of
Harvard, in a Chinese History class, I read the story
of the first revolt against the Chin dynasty," he says.
"The story is not reliable history, but it was very
moving."
At the AI Lab, Stallman's political activities had a
sharper-edged tone. During the 1970s, hackers faced the
constant challenge of faculty members and
administrators pulling an end-run around ITS and its
hacker-friendly design. One of the first attempts came
in the mid-1970s, as more and more faculty members
began calling for a file security system to protect
research data. Most other computer labs had installed
such systems during late 1960s, but the AI Lab, through
the insistence of Stallman and other hackers, remained
a security-free zone.
For Stallman, the opposition to security was both
ethical and practical. On the ethical side, Stallman
pointed out that the entire art of hacking relied on
intellectual openness and trust. On the practical side,
he pointed to the internal structure of ITS being built
to foster this spirit of openness, and any attempt to
reverse that design required a major overhaul.
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