Free as in Theft
The Hidden History of Open Source SoftwareBy Andreas Hamberger
Length8h 55m
About this audiobook
Software begins as a shared commons. It becomes valuable. Commercial actors extract the value. The community resists, and the cycle begins again.
From the RAND Corporation's code-sharing meetings in 1955 to the licence rebellions of 2021, the history of open source software follows a pattern so consistent it reads like a law: openness enables adoption, adoption attracts enclosure, enclosure provokes resistance. The cycle repeats. The stakes escalate.
Free as in Theft traces this arc across seven decades — from Unix to Linux, from the browser wars to the cloud, from the mobile duopoly to the AI frontier. Twenty-three chapters, eight eras, three continents.
Audiobook details
GenrePolitics and Government, Technology
Length8 hrs 55 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateMar 2, 2026
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1Preface
18Part V: The Corporate Conquest
2Part I: The Prehistory of Sharing
19Chapter 13: Linux in Every Pocket
3Chapter 1: The Garden Before the Wall
20Chapter 14: Social Coding and the New Monoculture
4Chapter 2: The Printer, the Manifesto, and the Foundation
21Chapter 15: The Cloud Eats Open Source
5Chapter 3: The Licence as Weapon
22Chapter 16: The Acquisitions
Show all chaptersShow less
6Part II: The Spark
23Part VI: The Invisible Infrastructure
7Chapter 4: "Just a Hobby, Won't Be Big and Professional"
24Chapter 17: Governance at Scale
8Chapter 5: The Bazaar Takes Shape
25Chapter 18: The Tragedy of the Digital Commons
9Chapter 6: The Definition War
26Chapter 19: Open Source in Crisis
10Part III: The Commercial Awakening
27Part VII: The New Enclosure
11Chapter 7: The Gold Rush
28Chapter 20: The Licence Rebellion
12Chapter 8: The Billion-Dollar Bet
29Chapter 21: Digital Sovereignty and the Geopolitics of Openness
13Chapter 9: The Enemy of My Enemy
30Part VIII: The AI Frontier
14Part IV: The Legal Wars
31Chapter 22: What Does "Open" Mean When the Resource Is Compute?
15Chapter 10: The Trial of the Century (That Nobody Remembers)
32Chapter 23: The Hardware Commons
16Chapter 11: The Patent Minefield and the GPL v3 War
33Epilogue
17Chapter 12: Oracle, Google, and the Battle for APIs
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