Free as in freedom
"Why would Microsoft executives lie awake at night worrying about the antics of a long-haired, renegade hacker named Richard Stallman? Why do some of the smartest programmers on the planet revere this man as "St. Ignucius"? And how did a stubborn, precocious boy obsessed with creating the perfect model rocket grow up to play David to the software industry's Goliath?". "Free as in Freedom traces this eccentric genius's evolution from gifted, solitary child to teen outcast to revered and reviled crusader. Through extensive interviews with Stallman, his family, fellow hackers, and tech-industry heavyweights, author Sam Williams crafts a portrait of a freedom fighter who has, in fact, changed the world."--BOOK JACKET.
Stats for nerds
5recommend
10mentions
8people
2009–2024years
60% recommend40% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- The following is a list of my favorite books on software engineering, cyber-security, and the history of IT business development.
Bowden, Mark (2011) Worm: The First Digital World War
Brooks, Frederick (1995) Mythical Man-Month, 2nd ed.
Christensen, Clayton (1997) Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail
Hafner, Katie and Matthew Lyon (1996) Where Wizards Stay Up Late: Origins of the Internet
Hunt, Andrew and David Thomas (1999) Pragmatic Programmer
MacCormick, John (2012) Nine Algorithms that Changed the Future
McConnell, Steve (2004) Code Complete, 2nd ed.
Mitnick, Kevin and William Simon (2002) Art of Deception
Poulsen, Kevin (2011) Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cyber-Crime Underworld
Raymond, Eric (2003) Art of Unix Programming
Stone, Brad (2013) The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon
Torvalds, Linus and David Diamond (2001) Just for Fun: Story of an Accidental Revolutionary
Wallace, James and Jim Erickson (1992) Hard Drive: Bill Gates and Making of the Microsoft Empire
Williams, Sam (2002) Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software
Wilson, Mike (1996) The Difference between God and Larry Ellison: Inside Oracle Corp
- Kudos to Klabnik for quoting from original documents. As he notes, Free Software is a complex phenomenon, and I respectfully submit that he doesn't do justice to the seeds-of-its-own-demise nature of its founding. My account, based largely on Sam Williams' outstanding Free as in Freedom:
- Free as in Freedom by Sam Williams is quite an interesting book about Richard Stallman and the origins of the free software movement.
A version revised by Stallman himself is available under the GFDL:
https://ipfs.io/ipfs/QmcGNKQQKnywV4mtAsUFmi9xaYthkoBucwAKGo7...
- > Why care whether the driver is open source?
I can't believe I am reading garbage like this on a forum called "Hacker News." Richard Stallman literally started the Free Software movement because the driver to the Xerox 9700 laster printer was closed source. Please read Steven Levy's Hackers and Sam William's Free as in Freedom. Asking "why care whether the driver is open source" to me as a hacker is like asking "why care whether you are a slave?"
- Here is a list of books that I have found most useful in my daily routine, both as a Linux systems administrator at work, and more generally as a human being learning to deal with other people. As always, I welcome correspondence with anyone about these texts or related topics: mitchelldeacon9@gmail.com
PSYCHOLOGY / SALES / MARKETING
Berne, Eric (1964) Games People Play
Carnegie, Dale (1981) How to Win Friends and Influence People, revised ed.
Cialdini, Robert (2006) Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, revised ed.
Covey, Stephen (1989) Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
Ekman, Paul (2007) Emotions Revealed: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life
Gray, John (1992) Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus
Greene, Robert (1998) 48 Laws of Power
Kahneman, Daniel (2011) Thinking, Fast and Slow
Munger, Charles (1995) 'Psychology of Human Misjudgment', speech at Harvard, unpublished
Packard, Vance (1957) Hidden Persuaders
Patterson et al. (2012) Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High, 2E
Sun Tzu (ca. 400 BCE) Art of War
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY / STATISTICS
Bowden, Mark (2011) Worm: First Digital World War
Brooks, Frederick (1995) Mythical Man-Month, 2E
Hunt, Andrew and David Thomas (1999) Pragmatic Programmer
Levy, Steven (2001) Crypto: How Code Rebels Beat the Government – Saving Privacy in the Digital Age
MacCormick, John (2012) Nine Algorithms that Changed the Future
Mitnick, Kevin and William Simon (2002) Art of Deception
Poulsen, Kevin (2011) Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cyber-Crime Underworld
Raymond, Eric (2003) Art of Unix Programming
Taleb, Nassim Nicholas (2005) Fooled by Randomness, 2E
_________ (2010) Black Swan: Impact of the Highly Improbable, 2E
Torvalds, Linus and David Diamond (2001) Just for Fun: Story of an Accidental Revolutionary
Williams, Sam (2002) Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software
- I didn't realize just how crazy smart he was until I started reading Free as in Freedom and read the accounts of how other impressive early programmers viewed him. Even among these guys, he stood out.
Sometimes I think, "what a shame it is that he had to stop coding!" Then I think of how the world might have turned out without the FSF and the GNU project and I shudder.
Stallman was exactly what the world needed, exactly when the world needed him. Now that the glory days are gone, the GNU project has matured, and there are other competing mindsets and communities, Stallman's looked at as this crazy hack activist and that's a shame. Nobody can be all things to all people. And the things he says are still right, still prescient, and still timely, if a bit antiquated.
Anyone reading this, if you can donate to or join the FSF, please do. Everything you love about computing today ultimately rests on Stallman's hard work.
https://crm.fsf.org/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=1...
