Comments on: Read This Book

By: Clarissa

Clarissa — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 07:09:41 +0000

One can say that Raymond’s theory protected and recognized the hacker. Yes dedication to social contribution is important to hacking, but what happens when a system that you built is no longer in your hands, out in the hands of investors who are clueless. Doesn’t copyright protect this? Is Stallman’s theory too much like the ideas of the hacker revolution and not enough about today? Software is so intricate that it is through the questions of this movement, or debate that answers and resolutions can be found. It was really great to read about this movement, but to also see that desoite their difference in ideologies Free Software and Open Source movement, is a debate searching for a better ways to progress software.

By: Nicole

Nicole — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 06:53:29 +0000

What struck me most when reading excerpts from Two Bits for class (Hacker Culture with Biella Coleman @ NYU) was how civilly every party involved in the Gosling-Stallman-Unipress mix-up over EMACS behaved. For what was a very popular program that stood to earn the commercial sector a sizable chunk of change, it’s almost unimaginable to think that people wouldn’t be at each others throats in a lawsuit frenzy.

After wading through the waters of copyleft manifestos and histories, one can easily come to expect to view the copyright holder as an overbearing, villainous character—but neither James Gosling nor the company Unipress really fulfilled that role. That was really refreshing, from my point of view.

By: Nathan

Nathan — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 01:12:06 +0000

The chapter on EMACs made me wonder about how the law changed questions of copyright and why it took so long. Is this a good thing or a bad thing in advancing the cause of Free Software? Some would say law takes so long and waters down what should happen. I’m really not sure what I think. But I am reminded of Clay Shirky’s discussion of groups I had in a class of his, in which we made a group decision. There was a pretty clear consensus about what the decision was going to be, but then it took another 40 minutes for us to continue discussing and keeping the group all involved in making it a consensus process. It kept the group together. Could we say that the reason it takes so long is along these lines?

By: Robert

Robert — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 15:08:26 +0000

Hi. I've made a .fb2 (fictionbook) version of your book. It's available here.

By: paurullan

paurullan — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 09:25:51 +0000

I would like to make a poor-student version: without notes, bibliography, index, A4 size and many more characters per page. Is there any way to access de source text?

By: Kiran Jonnalagadda

Kiran Jonnalagadda — Thu, 28 May 2009 20:38:05 +0000

I’ve made an EPub version available here: http://jace.zaiki.in/2009/05/29/two-bits-in-epub-format

By: crystal report

crystal report — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 20:06:32 +0000

[…] Christopher Kelty’s new book, via Glyn Moody: Recursive publics are publics concerned with the ability to build, control, […]

By: P2P Foundation » Blog Archive » Book of the Week: Christopher Kelty’s Two Bits

Mon, 07 Jul 2008 06:50:32 +0000

[...] can buy and read the book here, and we recommend reading the conclusions on the ‘cultural significance of free [...]

By: un ojo en el cielo » Breves

un ojo en el cielo » Breves — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 04:42:09 +0000

[...] una licencia Creative Commons y se puede leer online o descargar en un pdf. El libro se llama «Two bits». Lo bueno de leerlo online es que tiene un plugin que permite dejar comentarios en cada párrafo. [...]

By: Interprete » The Cultural Significance of Free Software

Interprete » The Cultural Significance of Free Software — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 15:26:30 +0000

[...] how but he did) to convince Duke University Press to release the whole book under a CC license. So download it to your heart’s delight and if you find it useful, do order a treeware copy (as you [...]