Books

Open Source Ecosystem

Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman and the free software revolution

Book cover for Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman and the free software revolution

In 2002, Sam Williams wrote Free as in Freedom, a biography of Richard M. Stallman. In its epilogue, Williams expressed hope that choosing to distribute his book under the GNU Free Documentation License would enable and encourage others to share corrections and their own perspectives through modifications to his work.

Free as in Freedom (2.0) is Stallman's revision of the original biography. While preserving Williams's viewpoint, it includes factual corrections and extensive new commentary by Stallman, as well as new prefaces by both authors written for the occasion. It is a rare kind of biography, where the reader has the benefit of both the biographer's original words and the subject's response.

The Architecture of Open Source Applications

Book cover for The Architecture of Open Source Applications

Architects look at thousands of buildings during their training, and study critiques of those buildings written by masters. In contrast, most software developers only ever get to know a handful of large programs well - usually programs they wrote themselves - and never study the great programs of history. As a result, they repeat one another's mistakes rather than building on one another's successes. This book's goal is to change that. In it, the authors of twenty-five open source applications explain how their software is structured, and why. What are each program's major components? How do they interact? And what did their builders learn during their development? In answering these questions, the contributors to this book provide unique insights into how they think.

Open Advice: FOSS: What We Wish We Had Known When We Started

Book cover for Open Advice: FOSS: What We Wish We Had Known When We Started

Open Advice is a knowledge collection from a wide variety of Free Software projects. It answers the question what 42 prominent contributors would have liked to know when they started so you can get a head-start no matter how and where you contribute


Help Us Improve This Page Updated at Tue, Feb 7, 2023