Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Who are computer hackers? What is free software? And what does the emergence of a community dedicated to the production of free and open source software--and to hacking as a technical, aesthetic, and moral project--reveal about the values of contemporary liberalism? Exploring the rise and political significance of the free and open source software (F/OSS) movement in the United States and Europe, Coding Freedom details the ethics behind hackers' devotion to F/OSS, the social codes that guide its production, and the political struggles through which hackers question the scope and direction of copyright and patent law. In telling the story of the F/OSS movement, the book unfolds a broader narrative involving computing, the politics of access, and intellectual property.


E. Gabriella Coleman tracks the ways in which hackers collaborate and examines passionate manifestos, hacker humor, free software project governance, and festive hacker conferences. Looking at the ways that hackers sustain their productive freedom, Coleman shows that these activists, driven by a commitment to their work, reformulate key ideals including free speech, transparency, and meritocracy, and refuse restrictive intellectual protections. Coleman demonstrates how hacking, so often marginalized or misunderstood, sheds light on the continuing relevance of liberalism in online collaboration.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Acknowledgments (p. ix)
• Introduction: A Tale of Two Worlds (p. 1)
• Part I Histories
• Chapter 1 The Life of a Free Software Hacker (p. 25)
• Chapter 2 A Tale of Two Legal Regimes (p. 61)
• Part II Codes of Value
• Chapter 3 The Craft and Craftiness of Hacking (p. 93)
• Chapter 4 Two Ethical Moments in Debian (p. 123)
• Part III The Politics of Avowal and Disavowal
• Chapter 5 Code Is Speech (p. 161)
• Conclusion: The Cultural Critique of Intellectual Property Law (p. 185)
• Epilogue: How to Proliferate Distinctions, Not Destroy Them (p. 207)
• Notes (p. 211)
• References (p. 225)
• Index (p. 249)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

This work by Coleman (art history and communication studies, McGill Univ., Canada) is at once history, ethnography, cultural criticism, and storytelling. Despite the ample scholarly analytic tools and theories and the necessary technical details about the work of computer hackers, it is remarkably readable on several levels. One can read the book as a narrative of the free software and open source movements, or as a sympathetic description of the behavior norms of hackers. Most profound and suggestive to this reviewer is the explication of how the open source software movement has revealed a "fault line" or internal contradiction in the core values of liberal democracy, namely that between free speech (unfettered dissemination of code) and intellectual property (often entailing strictures against and penalties for dissemination of code). Some readers will likely not consider hackers' aesthetic appreciation of good or clever coding as beauty, nor hackers' humor as funny, but these are Coleman's courageous attempts to provide a rounded depiction of this subculture. This book seems likely to be one of the defining works of cultural anthropology. Summing Up: Essential. All readership levels. D. Bantz University of Alaska