Pledging to build a free software operating
system "or die trying-of old age, of course," Stallman
quips, he resigned from the MIT staff in January, 1984,
to build GNU.
The resignation distanced Stallman's work from the
legal auspices of MIT. Still, Stallman had enough
friends and allies within the AI Lab to retain
rent-free access to his MIT office. He also had the
ability to secure outside consulting gigs to underwrite
the early stages of the GNU Project. In resigning from
MIT, however, Stallman negated any debate about
conflict of interest or Institute ownership of the
software. The man whose early adulthood fear of social
isolation had driven him deeper and deeper into the AI
Lab's embrace was now building a legal firewall between
himself and that environment.
For the first few months, Stallman operated in
isolation from the Unix community as well. Although his
announcement to the net.unix-wizards group had
attracted sympathetic responses, few volunteers signed
on to join the crusade in its early stages.
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