Robert Chassell (22 August 1946 – 30 June 2017) was one of the founding directors of the Free Software Foundation (FSF).
Life
Chassell was born on 22 August 1946, in Bennington, VT. He read economics at Peterhouse, Cambridge University.Obituary
In 1985, he became one of the founding directors of the FSF. While on the Board of Directors, he was also the treasurer for the FSF. At this time, he started the Texinfo documentation system for GNU together with Richard Stallman.
He left the FSF to become a full-time speaker on free software topics. He was diagnosed with progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) in 2010, and died as a result on 30 June 2017.
Chassell has authored several books including:
Later life and death He was diagnosed with progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), a rare neurodegenerative disorder, in 2010, and died as a result of the disease on 30 June 2017 in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, at the age of 70. His death was marked by tributes from figures across the free software community, including Bradley M. Kuhn and the Software Freedom Conservancy.
References
External links
A 30 minute audio interview with Robert An online copy of "Software Freedom: An Introduction" An online copy of "An Introduction to Programming in Emacs Lisp" Tribute to Robert J. Chassell on Bradley M. Kuhn's Personal Blog Tribute to Robert J. Chassell on the Software Freedom Conservancy Website Robert J. Chassell's writings are at Richard M. Stallman's personal website