Richard Matthew Stallman (aka rms), father of the GNU Project, founder of the Free Software Foundation, happy hacker, flute/recorder player, and uber-geek, visited Sri Lanka from the 14th to the 19th of January, 2008.

His visit here was the work of the late Professor V. K. Samaranayake, whose dream it was to have rms visit Sri Lanka. Unfortunately, Prof didn't live to see his dream become a reality. But, thanks to his efforts, the Sri Lankan FOSS community did.

rms spent the first two days of his holiday visiting Sigiriya, Polonnaruwa, and Kandy, followed by speeches at The University of Peradeniya, ICTA, and the SLIIT Campus in Malabe. He also managed to do some socialising, with a home-cooked dinner organised by the local geek community, lunch at the Millennium Information Technologies Corporate campus, a Meet the Geeks session at the rooftop of the UCSC Building at the University of Colombo, and a hopper feast at Raja Bojun.

All his speeches were well attended, with the one at SLIIT being so popular that participants were sitting in the aisles to hear the father of free software speak.

rms' visit was organised by the ICTA, with support from SLIIT, UCS, UoP, UoM, FOSS.lk, and the LK-LUG.