Robert J. Chassell Explained

Robert J. Chassell
Birth Date:	1946 8, df=yes
Birth Place:	Bennington, Vermont, U.S.
Death Date:	^[1]
Death Place:	Great Barrington, Massachusetts, U.S.

Robert "Bob" Chassell 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.^[2]

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.^[3] 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:

• Book: Chassell, Robert J. . Software Freedom: An Introduction . Boston . GNUpress . 2003 . 1-882114-95-7.
• Book: Chassell, Robert J. . An introduction to Programming in Emacs Lisp . Boston . GNUpress . 2004 . 1-882114-56-6.

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

Notes and References

1. Web site: Goodbye to Bob Chassell. Free Software Foundation. 5 July 2017. 11 July 2017.
2. https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/name/robert-chassell-obituary?pid=186092320 Obituary
3. Web site: GNU's Bulletin. 1986. Free Software Foundation. 22 August 2010.