Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Free As In Theft: The Hidden History of Open Source Software

Free As In Theft: The Hidden History of Open Source Software

Hamberger, Andreas

Paperback

Business GeneralGeneral ComputersProgramming

ISBN10: 0473784556
ISBN13: 9780473784553
Publisher: Te Pono
Published: Apr 6 2026
Pages: 368
Weight: 1.08
Height: 0.82 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
The history of open source is not a story of triumph. It is a cycle.

Software begins as a shared commons. It becomes valuable. Commercial actors extract the value. The community resists, and the cycle begins again.

From the RAND Corporation's code-sharing meetings in 1955 to the licence rebellions of 2021, the history of open source software follows a pattern so consistent it reads like a law: openness enables adoption, adoption attracts enclosure, enclosure provokes resistance. The cycle repeats. The stakes escalate.

Free as in Theft traces this arc across seven decades - from Unix to Linux, from the browser wars to the cloud, from the mobile duopoly to the AI frontier. Twenty-three chapters, eight eras, three continents.

Inside you will find:


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