Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software

摘要

Two Bits is an interdisciplinary hybrid: part theory, part ethnography, part history. It was not written for historians of technology, but it constructs an engaging history of free software that will appeal to readers interested in the history of computing and, more broadly, in the collaborative aspects of technological systems.I was relieved that Two Bits departs from familiar accounts of the economic logic (or lack thereof) in free software. Instead, its author, anthropologist Christopher Kelty, follows the words and actions of free software devotees who are committed to making source code publicly available and modifiable.