" I mean back at MIT, he also cracked peoples passwords to prove source code
should be open. Did you forget that too?"
Yes, I'm aware of the password stuff at MIT but the motivations for this were
not "to prove source code should be open" so please don't mischaracterize
things. Rather, it was because he saw passwords as being unethical - a way to
deny people access to using the computer. So, he started giving his password
out to quote from the Free As In Freedom:
==============
Cadging passwords and deliberately crashing the system in order to glean
evidence from the resulting wreckage, Stallman successfully foiled the system
administrators' attempt to assert control. After one foiled "coup d'etat,"
Stallman issued an alert to the entire AI staff.
"There has been another attempt to seize power," Stallman wrote. "So far, the
aristocratic forces have been defeated." To protect his identity, Stallman
signed the message "Radio Free OZ."
The disguise was a thin one at best. By 1982, Stallman's aversion to
passwords and secrecy had become so well known that users outside the AI
Laboratory were using his account as a stepping stone to the ARPAnet, the
research-funded computer network that would serve as a foundation for today's
Internet. One such "tourist" during the early 1980s was Don Hopkins, a
California programmer who learned through the hacking grapevine that all an
outsider needed to do to gain access to MIT's vaunted ITS system was to log
in under the initials RMS and enter the same three-letter monogram when the
system requested a password.
"I'm eternally grateful that MIT let me and many other people use their
computers for free," says Hopkins. "It meant a lot to many people."
This so-called "tourist" policy, which had been openly tolerated by MIT
management during the ITS years,6 fell by the wayside when Oz became the
lab's primary link to the ARPAnet. At first, Stallman continued his policy of
repeating his login ID as a password so outside users could follow in his
footsteps. Over time, however, the Oz's fragility prompted administrators to
bar outsiders who, through sheer accident or malicious intent, might bring
down the system. When those same administrators eventually demanded that
Stallman stop publishing his password, Stallman, citing personal ethics,
refused to do so and ceased using the Oz system altogether.
"[When] passwords first appeared at the MIT AI Lab I [decided] to follow my
belief that there should be no passwords," Stallman would later say. "Because
I don't believe that it's really desirable to have security on a computer, I
shouldn't be willing to help uphold the security regime."
