Richard, it might not come across in the article or other available sources on UCSD Pascal, but I'm convinced from many hours of interviewing Ken Bowles that UCSD Pascal and the efforts in programmed instruction were definitely about freedom, about empowering the end user and the small enterprise.

Political?  Not so much, if that's your thrust.

- Bill

On Mon, Aug 13, 2012 at 4:51 PM, Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> wrote:
    In the late 1970s, Ken Bowles and students at UC San Diego produced UCSD
    Pascal, which was largely an attempt to escape from the strictures of
    mainframe computing.

It sounds like this was about convenience, not freedom in the
political sense of human rights.  But I will take a look at the
article.

Advances in features (such as drop-down menus) are not the issue here.

Thanks.

--
Dr Richard Stallman
President, Free Software Foundation
51 Franklin St
Boston MA 02110
USA
www.fsf.org  www.gnu.org
Skype: No way! That's nonfree (freedom-denying) software.
  Use Ekiga or an ordinary phone call