"Free Software, Free Society: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman," first published by GNU Press in 2002 and issued in a second edition in 2010 (and a third in 2015), is the canonical single-volume collection of stallman's philosophical and political writings. It gathers in one place the essays that define the free software position and stallman's critique of proprietary software, digital-restrictions-management, and the trajectory of digital technology under capitalism.
The book collects the major essays including gnu-manifesto, why-software-should-be-free, right-to-read-essay, can-you-trust-your-computer, why-open-source-misses-the-point, why-schools-should-use-free-software, and free-software-definition-essay, along with speeches, interviews, and shorter pieces. It provides the most comprehensive single-source access to stallman's position.
The organization of the collection is thematic: it opens with foundational philosophy (the four-freedoms, the case against proprietary software), moves through the history and structure of copyleft and the GPL license family, addresses specific threats (DRM, trusted computing, software patents), and closes with broader political and social arguments. This structure reflects the arc of stallman's intellectual development from technical hacker to political activist.
The book's publication by GNU Press — the free-software-foundation's publishing arm — and its release under the GNU Free Documentation License is itself a statement: the book practices what it preaches, and readers are free to copy, modify, and redistribute it. Printed copies were sold; digital copies were always freely available. The second edition (2010) added essays addressing newer concerns, including SaaS (who-does-that-server-really-serve) and the continued development of the GPL (gpl-v3 analysis).
The book serves multiple audiences. For newcomers to the free software movement, it is the primary introduction to stallman's thinking in his own words, unmediated by the interpretations of journalists or critics. For scholars of technology and society, it is a primary source for a distinctive position — the most rigorous philosophical defense of software freedom and the most explicit account of the values embedded in the GPL license family. For practitioners, it provides the conceptual background for understanding why the free-software-foundation takes the positions it does on specific licenses, software recommendations, and technical standards.
eben-moglen's introduction to the first edition provides useful context for non-technical readers approaching stallman's legal thinking. The stallman-vs-open-source-philosophical-core note engages with the central tension the book embodies: stallman's insistence on ethical clarity at the cost of tactical flexibility.