Rebel Code
Linux and the Open Source Reevolution
The story of the free software phenomenon in the words of the hackers who made it happen' Wired.com
Rebel Code is the compelling account of how a band of mavericks took on big business and revolutionized the computer world.
In 1991 a young student, Linus Torvalds, bought a PC and began writing a new software program. It started as a hobby, but in a few years he and a global alliance of hackers, linked by the Net, had developed an operating system that now threatens Microsoft. GNU/Linux is used by millions, and most troubling of all for the corporate giants, it is free.
In this definitive account, Glyn Moody tells the astonishing David-and-Goliath story of Linux, placing it in the broader history of the free software movement, and shows what can be achieved when creativity and co-operation rise above the profit motive.
The story of its development reveals the importance of cooperation in new technology. Hundreds of programmers from around the world have worked outside government and corporate control to create a product that has caused conventional business to blanch. The book describes in vivid detail the dreamers and businessmen who have turned a private passion into a global phenomenon.
"An entertaining yet serious account of the skirmishes, guerrilla campaigns and full-frontal assaults in what is now a twenty-five-year stand-off... If the twenty-first century contains any serious ideological battles between might and right... it seems likely that they will be fought in cyberspace' Sunday Times
'Riveting ... a superlative book' Washington Post
342 pages
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