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A revolution is sweeping the software world
-- one that threatens to pull even the mighty Microsoft
Corporation from its throne. Bill Gates and his company's
rule over the software industry through their tight control
of Microsoft Windows is facing their biggest challenge ever
-- a new competitor that can't be bought, coopted, or manipulated
with any of the traditional tools of corporate power. Its
name:
Linux.
Free for All is the story of a group
of dedicated software hackers from around the world who,
in their spare time, created an "open" operating
system that rivals and in many ways surpasses Microsoft's.
Peter Wayner, a writer whose coverage of
technology appears frequently in the New York Times
and Salon magazine, tells a fascinating tale of how
a simple idea -- creating and giving away an "open"
operating system that people can change and customize --
sparked a grass-roots movement among programmers and revolutionized
the software business.
Free for All goes behind the scenes,
telling us about the creators and users of Linux. Along
the way you will meet the leaders of this revolution, including
Richard Stallman, who founded the free software movement,
Linus Torvalds, the coding genius and Stallman disciple,
who became the master and coordinator of the evolving system
(and named it after himself), and many others who aided
and nurtured the growing free software movement. You'll
learn how and why they gave their code away for free, threatening
the Redmond, Washington, giant's hegemony and spawning a
whole new industry of Linux-related companies and software.
You will also learn where the Linux movement
is going and how it is likely to affect the high-tech industry
and, ultimately, the computers you use at home and on the
job. As fresh and exciting as today's headlines and tomorrow's
IPOs, the story of Linux is just beginning. Here is Act
I.
Peter Wayner reports on technology for
the New York Times and Salon magazine. He
is the editor for www.fly-zone.com and the author of eight
professional computer books, including Disappearing
Cryptography. He holds a Ph.D. from Cornell University,
and an A.B. from Princeton, where he majored in mathematics.
He lives in Baltimore, Maryland.
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