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Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software
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Author: Sam Williams
List Price: $22.95
Our Price: Click to see the latest and low price
ISBN: 0596002874
Publisher: O'Reilly & Associates (01 March, 2002)
Edition: Hardcover
Sales Rank: 73,631
Average Customer Rating: 4.21 out of 5
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Customer ReviewsRating: 4 out of 5
Worth Reading
While other reviews here are highly critical, this book has received wide distribution and readership, and therefore has become required reading.Being a relatively short book (little over 200 pages), it is an easy read, and allows a decent glimpse into RMS' history and life. RMS has played a phenomenally important key role in the creation and preservation of free software, namely through the creation of the Free Software Foundation, the GNU Public License and also through the wealth of important projects the FSF has produced. He is the true messiah of free software, and while his ideals in general may not be unique, he pioneered the freedom movement in digital form which has expanded beyond software alone and into content as well (see also the Electronic Frontier Foundation -- eff.org).
Rating: 4 out of 5
Good book on a very interesting personality
This is a good book on Richard Stallman, the man behind GNU. Prior to reading this book, I had never even seen what he looks like, yet his work and dedication have had a great impact on my professional and academic career (I've been using GNU tools and compilers since my undergrad days in the early 1990s). It's good to finally place a face and personality with GNU.The book itself provides a good story on Stallman, but the writing is poor. There are a modest number of typos throughout the book (come on now, couldn't the author have at least run ispell on the document?) as well as a few astounding grammatical errors. Furthermore, the author doesn't do a very good job placing dates with most of his facts. The introduction to the printer incident -- evidently a defining moment in Stallman's life -- is not even given a year. This is important, for the events that methodically unfolded in Stallman's life motivated him greatly. With this in mind, the author fails to convey much time-continuity with his writing; in particular, he shifts back and forth between the present and the past without regard for even stating what year he's discussing. Finally, a short, concise timeline of events as an appendix or something would have been nice. All in all, this is a very good book about Stallman and his motivations for free software. If you've ever used GNU tools, compilers, or GNU/Linux, then you owe it to yourself to read this book and understand how these pieces of software got into your hands.
Rating: 5 out of 5
You don't have to like him but you must respect him
I really didn't have high expectations for this book, I figured it would be nothing more than a historical account of the accomplishments of RMS, I was dead wrong. "Free as in Freedom" looks at RMS from a personal and technical level. From his beginnings as an awkward boy in NYC, all the way to rise of the free software movement. I figured this book would be written from extremely pro-gnu standpoint, but I was pleasantly surprised to find an objective account of Richard's issues with the open source movement.
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