Robert "Bob" Chassell was one of the founding directors of the

Free Software Foundation The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a 501(c)#501(c)(3), 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded by Richard Stallman on October 4, 1985, to support the free software movement, with the organization's preference for software being distributed ...

(FSF).

Life

Bob was born on 22 August 1946, in

Bennington, VT Bennington is a town in Bennington County, Vermont, United States. It is one of two shire towns (county seats) of the county, the other being Manchester. As of the 2020 US Census, the population was 15,333. Bennington is the most populous t ...

. He read economics at

Peterhouse Peterhouse is the oldest constituent college of the University of Cambridge in England, founded in 1284 by Hugh de Balsham, Bishop of Ely. Today, Peterhouse has 254 undergraduates, 116 full-time graduate students and 54 fellows. It is quite o ...

Cambridge University , mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts. Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge. , established = , other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...

. 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 Texinfo is a typesetting syntax used for generating documentation in both on-line and printed form (creating filetypes as , , , etc., and its own hypertext format, ) with a single source file. It is implemented by a computer program released as fr ...

documentation system for

GNU GNU () is an extensive collection of free software (383 packages as of January 2022), which can be used as an operating system or can be used in parts with other operating systems. The use of the completed GNU tools led to the family of operat ...

together with

Richard Stallman Richard Matthew Stallman (; born March 16, 1953), also known by his initials, rms, is an American free software movement activist and programmer. He campaigns for software to be distributed in such a manner that its users have the freedom to ...

. He left the FSF to become a full-time speaker on

free software Free software or libre software is computer software distributed under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions. Free software is a matter of liberty, no ...

topics. He was diagnosed with

progressive supranuclear palsy Progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) is a late-onset degenerative disease involving the gradual deterioration and death of specific volumes of the brain. The condition leads to symptoms including loss of balance, slowing of movement, difficulty ...

(PSP) in 2010, and died as a result on 30 June 2017. Chassell has authored several books including: * *

References

External links

A 30 minute audio interview with Robert

* ttps://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_mono/eintr.html 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
GNU people Free software people Open content people Alumni of Peterhouse, Cambridge Neurological disease deaths in Massachusetts Deaths from progressive supranuclear palsy 1946 births 2017 deaths {{compu-bio-stub