Free Software, Free Society: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman is a collection of writings (mostly essays, with occasional articles, interviews and speech transcripts) by Richard Stallman. It introduces the subject of history and development of the GNU Project and the Free Software Foundation, explains the author's philosophical position on the Free Software movement, deals with the topics of software ethics, copyright and patent laws, as well as business practices in application to computer software. The author proposes Free software licenses (mostly GPL) as a solution to social issues created by proprietary software and described in essays. The introduction is written by Lawrence Lessig, professor at Harvard Law School. The book is available online allowing verbatim (without making changes) copying and distribution of the whole collection, while each essay is licensed under Creative Commons CC BY-ND 4.0 International License.

Content

Three editions were published by GNU Press (in 2002, 2010 and 2015 ), each subsequent containing updated versions of the original essays and new works about emerging contemporary issues. The 3rd edition is divided into seven main parts: In addition, the book contains three appendices: