Product: 0596002874

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: 4
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