Download


You can read Two Bits here

You can download Two Bits in its entirety here. Or you can buy a copy.

Update 2019:Ahora también puedes leer Two Bits en español! Descarga una copia completa aquí.( You can now also read Two Bits in Spanish! Download a full copy here.)

The spanish version was created as a "modulation" of Two Bits, through the cooperative, commons-based work of Florencio Cabello and a long list of participants. Read more about this process here.

In 2007 I convinced Duke University Press that there would be no end of shame in publishing a book about Free Software that was not released to the world for free, as in freedom, and that they might actually learn something about the value of open access from this experiment. In the course of the last 7 years, I think the experiment proved a success: Duke University Press has sold a respectable number of copies of the conventional printed book and I have seen world-wide downloads and responses from readers and students that certainly exceeded even my high expectations.

Creative Commons License

The text is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution, Share Alike, Non-commercial License. This means you can do pretty much anything you want with it, as long as you keep my name on it, link back to this site, and don’t compete with Duke University Press for sales (and you really shouldn’t do that, because they rock for letting me release the book in this way). Read it, share it, rip it, burn it, re-mix it, use it in class, tell others to read it, ignore it, critique it, turn it into art or a doorstop.

If you want to transform the text, download the HTML version (zipped), created by Joel Ibarra and Duke University Press.

Both of the HTML versions list the page numbers of the print version.

If you transform the book, or think you might want to transform it (translate it, create a new version, etc.), let me know, and I will try to host it here.