Richard Stallman announced his resignation from both MIT and FSF, due to pressure on MIT and him over a series of misunderstandings and mischaracterizations.

Richard Stallman acknowledged that since the time of his past writings, he had learned that there were problems with underage sex, writing on his blog: "Through personal conversations in recent years, I've learned to understand how sex with a child can harm per psychologically. This changed my mind about the matter: I think adults should not do that."

The first program-independent GNU General Public License (GPL) was released.

Stallman completed the original version of texinfo, a GPL replacement, loosely based on Scribe.

Approximate date for the commercialization of Lisp Machine by Symbolics and Lisp Machines, Inc. (LMI), based on CADR that was developed at MIT's AI laboratory where Stallman was working as a hacker.

Approximate date for the development of CADR, another Lisp machine operating system at MIT's AI laboratory where Stallman was working as a hacker.

Approximate date for the development of Lisp machine operating system (the CONS) at MIT's AI laboratory where Stallman was working as a hacker.

Richard Matthew Stallman, also known as RMS, was born in New York City. This marks the beginning of the life of a key figure in the free software movement.