Part of the Twenty Books in Twenty Days series.

Like Accidental Empires, this is one of those books that people in the software industry probably should read but mostly don’t. Maybe knowing the history and the characters that got us to our current state may not make a big difference day-to-day, but I think it allows us to appreciate what we have, or at least understand some of the starting conditions.

For instance, we take the idea of free software for granted these days, but it wasn’t always that way. (But maybe rms always was that way. Society turned a blind eye to a lot of questionable behaviour over the years, and the software industry is no different. When you read about the good work he did, you might also want to read up on some of his more recent writings to get a more rounded picture.)

The edition I’m linking to here [affiliate link] is newer than the one I have. Levy has also written a bunch of other books that I’d recommend: Insanely Great, In The Plex, Crypto, The Perfect Thing.