Free Software, Free Society: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman is a collection of writings (mostly essays, with occasional articles, interviews and speech transcripts) by
Richard Stallman. It introduces the subject of history and development of the
GNU Project and the
Free Software Foundation, explains the author's philosophical position on the
Free Software movement, deals with the topics of software ethics, copyright and patent laws, as well as business practices in application to computer software. The author proposes
Free software licenses (mostly
GPL) as a solution to social issues created by
proprietary software and described in essays.
The book is available online allowing verbatim (without making changes) copying and distribution of the whole collection, while each essay is licensed under
Creative CommonsCC BY-ND 4.0 International License.
Content
Three editions were published by
GNU Press (in 2002, 2010[1] and 2015[2]), each subsequent containing updated versions of the original essays and new works about emerging contemporary issues.
The 3rd edition is divided into seven main parts:
The GNU Project and Free Software – defines
four essential software freedoms, shows ethical and social advantages of using and creating
free software and explains Stallman's personal background on starting the GNU Project. It contains the original announcement of the project which became part of
GNU Manifesto.
What's in a Name? – is dedicated to explaining Stallman's position on many naming conventions he considers wrong (
intellectual property), harmful (free versus open-source), or in need of clarification (
GNU/Linux naming controversy).
Copyright and Injustice – explains why current interpretation of copyright law does not meet the original purpose and goes as far as to state that it is even detrimental to that. Notably, it contains a short story entitled The Right to Read.
Software Patents: Danger to Programmers – does similar demonstration for patent law.