Given his
recent months-long ordeal with Symbolics, Stallman felt
more comfortable with the latter option. "I suppose I
could have stopped working on computers altogether,"
Stallman says. "I had no special skills, but I'm sure I
could have become a waiter. Not at a fancy restaurant,
probably, but I could've been a waiter somewhere."
Being a waiter-i.e., dropping out of programming
altogether-would have meant completely giving up an
activity, computer programming, that had given him so
much pleasure. Looking back on his life since moving to
Cambridge, Stallman finds it easy to identify lengthy
periods when software programming provided the only
pleasure. Rather than drop out, Stallman decided to
stick it out.
An atheist, Stallman rejects notions such as fate,
dharma, or a divine calling in life. Nevertheless, he
does feel that the decision to shun proprietary
software and build an operating system to help others
do the same was a natural one. After all, it was
Stallman's own personal combination of stubbornness,
foresight, and coding virtuosity that led him to
consider a fork in the road most others didn't know
existed.
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