Robert J. Chassell

Robert "Bob" Chassell was one of the founding directors of the Free Software Foundation (FSF).

Robert J. Chassell
Born	(1946-08-22)22 August 1946 Bennington, Vermont, U.S.
Died	30 June 2017(2017-06-30) (aged 70)[1] Great Barrington, Massachusetts, U.S.

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:

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