For Fun and Profit: A History of the Free and Open Source Software Revolution

Description

academic history of Linux and open-source

see this answer to the Retro Computing StackExchange question "Video and book on the history of Linux distributions?"

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In the 1980s, there was a revolution with far-reaching consequences — a revolution to restore software freedom. In the early 1980s, after decades of making source code available with programs, most programmers ceased sharing code freely. A band of revolutionaries, self-described "hackers," challenged this new norm by building operating systems with source code that could be freely shared. In For Fun and Profit , Christopher Tozzi offers an account of the free and open source software (FOSS) revolution, from its origins as an obscure, marginal effort by a small group of programmers to the widespread commercial use of open source software today. Tozzi explains FOSS's historical trajectory, shaped by eccentric personalities — including Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds — and driven both by ideology and pragmatism, by fun and profit.Tozzi examines hacker culture and its influence on the Unix operating system, the reaction to Unix's commercialization, and...