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Encyclopedia > Leonard H. Tower Jr.
Leonard H. Tower Jr.
Len Tower wearing League for Programming Freedom and "No Smoking" badges (c. 1996)
Len Tower wearing League for Programming Freedom and "No Smoking" badges (c. 1996)
Born June 17, 1949 (1949-06-17) (age 57)
Astoria, Queens, New York, New York, USA
Residence Somerville, MA, USA, Earth
Nationality American
Field Activist,
Software designer,
Biologist
Institutions MIT,
Free Software Foundation
Alma mater MIT,
Brentwood HS
Known for GNU diff,
gcc
Notable prizes Vigil Honor, Order of the Arrow;
Eagle Scout, Boy Scouts of America

Leonard "Len" H. Tower Jr. (born June 17, 1949) is a hacker and activist in the free software movement, environmentalist, artist, poet, and gardener. An Eagle Scout, Tower was also awarded the Vigil Honor in the Order of the Arrow.[1] In 1971, he received a B.S. in biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he held several management roles at The Tech, the student newspaper,[2] and became active in Alpha Phi Omega[3] and other service organizations as he has remained throughout his life. He is well known for his software development and community relations for, and his organization, administration, and support of the GNU Project's Free Software Foundation and the League for Programming Freedom. In addition to being an original coauthor of gcc and GNU diff as used in MediaWiki, Len is an avid cyclist and pedestrian who has never owned a car.[1] Image File history File links Len_Tower. ... League for Programming Freedom (LPF) was founded in 1989 by Richard Stallman to unite free software developers as well as developers of proprietary software to fight against software patents and the extension of the scope of copyright. ... June 17 is the 168th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (169th in leap years), with 197 days remaining. ... 1949 (MCMXLIX) was a common year starting on Saturday (the link is to a full 1949 calendar). ... Astoria can mean: Cities, villages, and towns in the United States (listed in order of population) Astoria, Queens, formerly an independent town, now part of Queens in New York City The city of Astoria, Oregon The village of Astoria, Illinois The town of Astoria, South Dakota Famous Places The London... Queens Borough in New York City, in yellow Queens is one of the five boroughs of New York City, USA. Geographically the largest borough in the city, Queens is home to many immigrants and two of New Yorks major airports. ... New York, NY redirects here. ... NY redirects here. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Somerville is a city located in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, just north of Boston. ... This article is about the U.S. State. ... Adjectives: Terrestrial, Terran, Telluric, Tellurian, Earthly Atmosphere Surface pressure: 101. ... Download high resolution version (1085x724, 102 KB)Earth flag created solely from public domain sources and released into the public domain by Derrick Coetzee. ... Image File history File links No higher resolution available. ... Activism, in a general sense, can be described as intentional action to bring about social or political change. ... Software design is a process of problem-solving and planning for a software solution. ... A biologist is a scientist devoted to and producing results in biology through the study of organisms. ... The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private, coeducational research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. ... The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a non-profit corporation founded in October 1985 by Richard Stallman to support the free software movement (free as in freedom), and in particular the GNU project. ... The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private, coeducational research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. ... Brentwood High School is a secondary school in Brentwood, New York. ... GNU (pronounced ) is a computer operating system - consisting of a kernel, libraries, system utilities, compilers, and end-user application software - composed entirely of free software. ... At computing, diff is a file comparison utility that outputs the differences between two files. ... The GNU Compiler Collection (usually shortened to GCC) is a set of programming language compilers produced by the GNU Project. ... It is important to distinguish between awards, honors, and membership levels in the Order of the Arrow – the honor camping society of the Boy Scouts of America. ... The Order of the Arrow (OA) is a program of the Boy Scout division of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA). ... An Eagle Scout is a Scout with the highest rank attainable in the Boy Scouting program of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA). ... For the Boy Scout program within the BSA, see Boy Scouts (Boy Scouts of America). ... June 17 is the 168th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (169th in leap years), with 197 days remaining. ... 1949 (MCMXLIX) was a common year starting on Saturday (the link is to a full 1949 calendar). ... Hacker is a term applied often to computer software or computer hardware programmers, designers and administrators, and especially those who are perceived as experts or highly accomplished. ... The free software movement, also known as the free software philosophy, began in 1983 when Richard Stallman announced the GNU Project. ... An Eagle Scout is a Scout with the highest rank attainable in the Boy Scouting program of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA). ... It is important to distinguish between awards, honors, and membership levels in the Order of the Arrow – the honor camping society of the Boy Scouts of America. ... The Order of the Arrow (OA) is a program of the Boy Scout division of the Boy Scouts of America (BSA). ... The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private, coeducational research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. ... Alpha Phi Omega (commonly known as APO, but also ΑΦΩ, A-Phi-O, and A-Phi-Q) is a co-ed service fraternity organized to provide community service, leadership development, [1] and social opportunities to college students. ... The GNU logo, drawn by Etienne Suvasa The GNU Project was announced in 1983 by Richard Stallman. ... The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a non-profit corporation founded in October 1985 by Richard Stallman to support the free software movement (free as in freedom), and in particular the GNU project. ... League for Programming Freedom (LPF) was founded in 1989 by Richard Stallman to unite free software developers as well as developers of proprietary software to fight against software patents and the extension of the scope of copyright. ... The GNU Compiler Collection (usually shortened to GCC) is a set of programming language compilers produced by the GNU Project. ... At computing, diff is a file comparison utility that outputs the differences between two files. ... MediaWiki is a wiki software package licensed under the GNU General Public License. ...

Contents

GNU Project

As a member of the GNU Project, Tower was one of the founders and an initial director of the Free Software Foundation (FSF) from 1985 through 1997.[4] He was the first full time staff at the FSF, working on the creation of the GNU C compiler (now known as GNU Compiler Collection), rewriting it from an extended dialect of Pascal which was difficult to bootstrap, into portable C, and redesigning parts of the parser, register transfer language generator and definitions, and the VAX machine description.[5] Quoting Richard Stallman in February, 1986: The GNU logo, drawn by Etienne Suvasa The GNU Project was announced in 1983 by Richard Stallman. ... The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a non-profit corporation founded in October 1985 by Richard Stallman to support the free software movement (free as in freedom), and in particular the GNU project. ... The GNU Compiler Collection (usually shortened to GCC) is a set of programming language compilers produced by the GNU Project. ... Pascal is an imperative computer programming language, developed in 1970 by Niklaus Wirth as a language particularly suitable for structured programming. ... C is a general-purpose, procedural, imperative computer programming language developed in 1972 by Dennis Ritchie at the Bell Telephone Laboratories for use with the Unix operating system. ... Register Transfer Language (RTL) is an intermediate representation used by the GCC compiler. ... VAX is a 32-bit computing architecture that supports an orthogonal instruction set (machine language) and virtual addressing (i. ... Richard Matthew Stallman (often abbreviated as RMS) (born March 16, 1953) is a software freedom activist, hacker, and software developer. ...

"Although I have a portable C and Pascal compiler, it has a serious drawback: it is a very large program, and intrinsically cannot be made smaller. It is also very hard to bootstrap.
"The problem is that most of the compiler is written in Pastel, a super-hairy extended Pascal, and it is also the sole compiler for that language. To make it smaller, we must eliminate the hair needed to compile Pastel; then we will not be able to compile Pastel, so it must all be rewritten into C.
"Len Tower, the sole full-time GNU staff person, is working on this, with one or two assistants."[6]

In March 1987, Tower posted Stallman's announcement of the first beta release of gcc.[7]


Tower was also one of the creators of GNU diff, a file comparison utility.[8] Diff has been incorporated into hundreds of other programs, including MediaWiki, where it was "extracted verbatim from analyze.c (GNU diffutils-2.7)."[9] At computing, diff is a file comparison utility that outputs the differences between two files. ... MediaWiki is a wiki software package licensed under the GNU General Public License. ...


During the late 1980s and early 1990s, Tower spoke at USENIX conferences as the official representative of the FSF.[10] In 1987, the FSF described Tower primarily as a programmer who also did some administrative tasks;[11] he managed mailing lists, newsgroups, and requests for information.[12][13] The USENIX Association is the Advanced Computing Technical Association. ...


League for Programming Freedom

Tower was an early member of the League for Programming Freedom. Through 1991, Len was one of the league's top two speakers, the other being Richard Stallman.[14] League for Programming Freedom (LPF) was founded in 1989 by Richard Stallman to unite free software developers as well as developers of proprietary software to fight against software patents and the extension of the scope of copyright. ... Richard Matthew Stallman (often abbreviated as RMS) (born March 16, 1953) is a software freedom activist, hacker, and software developer. ...


Notes and References

  1. ^ a b Tower, Leonard H. (2006) "An autobiography in progress of Leonard (Len) H. Tower Jr.," Art.Net studio web site, accessed 27 September 2006.
  2. ^ The Tech MIT student newspaper masthead, 15 February 1972, page 4.
  3. ^ Len Tower family tree from the Alpha Chi chapter, Section 96, Region 1, of Alpha Phi Omega, membership database accessed 27 September 2006.
  4. ^ Heuer, Karl (July 1997). "GNU's Who". GNU's Bulletin 1 (23). Retrieved on 2006-09-24. 
  5. ^ Stallman, Richard M. (2001) "Contributors to GCC," in Using and Porting the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) for gcc version 2.95 (Cambridge, Mass.: Free Software Foundation)
  6. ^ Stallman, Richard M. (February 1986). "GNU Status". GNU's Bulletin 1 (1). Retrieved on 2006-09-26. 
  7. ^ Tower, Leonard (1987) "GNU C compiler beta test release," comp.lang.misc USENET newsgroup posting; see also the gcc release timeline.
  8. ^ Tower, Leonard H., et al. (2001) "AUTHORS" file, revision 1.3, GNU diff and patch utilities (Cambridge, Mass.: Free Software Foundation)
  9. ^ Manske, Magnus, et al. (2002-6) "includes/DifferenceEngine.php," line 1025, from the MediaWiki source code, accessed 27 September 2006.
  10. ^ Smallwood, Kevin C. (30 December 1991) "Updated BOF Schedule for San Francisco USENIX Conference," comp.org.usenix USENET posting; see also Noah Friedman's comments of 19 June 1992.
  11. ^ Rubin, Paul (June 1987). "GNU's Who". GNU's Bulletin 1 (1). Retrieved on 2006-09-24. 
  12. ^ Tuttle, J.; Chassell, R.; Tower, L. (February 1988). "GNU's Who". GNU's Bulletin 1 (4). Retrieved on 2006-09-24. 
  13. ^ Goldstein, S.; Chassell, R.; Tower, L. (January 1997). "GNU's Who". GNU's Bulletin 1 (22). Retrieved on 2006-09-24. 
  14. ^ MacPhee, Spike R. (November 1991). "Speaking Volunteers". Programming Freedom 1 (1). Retrieved on 2006-09-24. 

The oil painting Earth and Sky has greeted visitors to Art. ... Alpha Phi Omega (commonly known as APO, but also ΑΦΩ, A-Phi-O, and A-Phi-Q) is a co-ed service fraternity organized to provide community service, leadership development, [1] and social opportunities to college students. ... For the Manfred Mann album, see 2006 (album). ... September 24 is the 267th day of the year (268th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... For the Manfred Mann album, see 2006 (album). ... September 26 is the 269th day of the year (270th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... For the Manfred Mann album, see 2006 (album). ... September 24 is the 267th day of the year (268th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... For the Manfred Mann album, see 2006 (album). ... September 24 is the 267th day of the year (268th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... For the Manfred Mann album, see 2006 (album). ... September 24 is the 267th day of the year (268th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... For the Manfred Mann album, see 2006 (album). ... September 24 is the 267th day of the year (268th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...

External links

Free software Portal
v • d • e
GNU Project

Image File history File links Portal. ... The oil painting Earth and Sky has greeted visitors to Art. ... The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private, coeducational research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. ... The GNU logo, drawn by Etienne Suvasa The GNU Project was announced in 1983 by Richard Stallman. ... Image File history File links Heckert_GNU_white. ...

History: GNU Manifesto • GNU Project • Free Software Foundation (FSF) • History of free software
GNU licenses: GNU General Public License (GPL) • GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) • GNU Free Documentation License (FDL)
Software: GNU operating system • bash • GNU Compiler Collection • Emacs • GNU C Library • Coreutils • GNU build system • other GNU packages and programs
Speakers: Robert J. Chassell • Loïc Dachary • Ricardo Galli • Georg C. F. Greve • Federico Heinz • Bradley M. Kuhn • Eben Moglen • Richard Stallman • Len Tower
The GNU Manifesto was written by Richard Stallman at the beginning of the GNU Project, to ask for participation and support. ... The GNU logo, drawn by Etienne Suvasa The GNU Project was announced in 1983 by Richard Stallman. ... The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a non-profit corporation founded in October 1985 by Richard Stallman to support the free software movement (free as in freedom), and in particular the GNU project. ... This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ... The GNU logo The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a widely-used free software license, originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU project. ... GNU logo The GNU Lesser General Public License (formerly the GNU Library General Public License) is a free software license published by the Free Software Foundation. ... GNU logo (similar in appearance to a gnu) The GNU Free Documentation License (GNU FDL or simply GFDL) is a copyleft license for free content, designed by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) for the GNU project. ... GNU (pronounced ) is a computer operating system - consisting of a kernel, libraries, system utilities, compilers, and end-user application software - composed entirely of free software. ... This article is about the Unix shell. ... The GNU Compiler Collection (usually shortened to GCC) is a set of programming language compilers produced by the GNU Project. ... Emacs is a class of text editors, possessing an extensive set of features, that are popular with computer programmers and other technically proficient computer users. ... Glibc is the GNU projects C standard library. ... The GNU Core Utilities or coreutils is a package of GNU software containing many of the basic tools such as cat, ls, and rm needed for Unix-like operating systems. ... The GNU build system is a suite of tools produced by the GNU project that assist in making packages portable to many UNIX-like systems. ... This is an incomplete list of the software packages developed for or maintained by the Free Software Foundation for GNU, a free UNIX-compatible operating system whose development started in 1984. ... Robert (aka Bob) Chassell was one of the founding directors of Free Software Foundation (FSF) in 1985. ... Loïc Dachary is a pioneer of the GNU Project and notably active in free software development since 1987. ... Ricardo Adolph Galli Granada, also known as Ricardo de Software Libre or Gallir, is doctor of computer science at the University of the Balearic Islands, where he teaches operating system design. ... Georg C. F. Greve (born March 10, 1973 in Helgoland, Germany) is initiator and president of the Free Software Foundation Europe. ... Federico Heinz is a Latin-American programmer and Free Software advocate living in Argentina. ... He was Chief Executive of Free Software Foundation and is now CTO of Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC). ... Eben Moglen Eben Moglen is a professor of law and history of law at Columbia University, serves pro bono as General Counsel for the Free Software Foundation, and is the Chairman of Software Freedom Law Center. ... Richard Matthew Stallman (often abbreviated as RMS) (born March 16, 1953) is a software freedom activist, hacker, and software developer. ...



 

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