Free for All is the story of how a loose-knit group of programmers, dreamers and revolutionaries discovered that they could write better software in their spare time if they just shared with each other.

It follows the work of the great Richard Stallman who founded the movement with his Manifesto in 1984, the fun loving Linus Torvalds who built Linux on top of the foundation created by Stallman and his disciples, and the team of thousands who chipped in to build an operating system that could rival anything built by Microsoft.

But it's also the story of a group in Berkeley who built another operating system and wrestled with one of the biggest corporations ever to give it to the world. You'll find the tale of how Kirk McKusick, Keith Bostic and many, many others worked to create a clean version of this operating system, BSD UNIX, that was free from AT&T's grasp. You'll also discover the startling story of how and why this gift mutated and turned into FreeBSD, OpenBSD and NetBSD, three flourishing rivals for everyone's attention. These three operating systems are now part of the foundation for Apple's MacOS X, the first major test of how open source performs for a broad marketplace.

This is a book about what happens when people are free to open up their software and fix what they don't like. This is a story about liberty and the pursuit of code that doesn't crash into a blue screen of death. This is a tale about the meaning of money and wealth in a world where sharing costs next to nothing.

``this is a story told with gusto..."--Kirkus Reviews

``In an entertaining, unabashedly partisan chroniccle of that movement, the author presents such memorable characters as Richard Stallman, the programming wiz who was an early advocate of free software, and his mild-mannered Finnish disciple Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux. If you've ever wondered why anyone would give away perfectly good code, you now have a place to turn for enlightenment." -- The New Yorker

``Free for All offers as thorough and engaging an account of the open-source movement-- and the pitfalls in its path--as readers are likely to find anywhere." --Demian McLean, Amazon.com's reviewer

``Wayner himself is an open source proponent, and at one point he waxes philosophical about wealth and freedom, capturing the essence of the free software movement."--David Rouse, Booklist

What's inside.

Some answers.

A list of corrections.

Some snippets from the book.