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Free Books from Other Publishers

Introduction

We have long supported publication of free documentation (free in the sense of freedom--we don't mean gratis). free software needs free documentation because you must be free to copy, change and redistribute the documentation along with the software. To qualify as free, the documentation must be released under a free documentation license.

We publish a number of free books of documentation ourselves. You can order printed copies of our books, download them from the /gnu/Manuals directory on our ftp site and browse them online. We have been doing this since around 1986.

More recently, some commercial publishers have begun publishing free books. (Like our books, these are free in the sense of freedom; the commercially printed copies are sold.) On this page, we keep a list of these books that we have come across. If you find out about a free book that we don't have listed here, please let us know by emailing us at <free-books@gnu.org>.

Free Books

Newer listings are placed at the top of this list.

Title Author Publisher ISBN License
An Introduction to GCC Brian J. Gough Network Theory Ltd. 0-9541617-9-3 GNU Free Documentation License
Python Language Reference Manual Guido van Rossum and Fred L. Drake, Jr. Network Theory Ltd. 0-9541617-8-5 Python license
An Introduction to Python Guido van Rossum and Fred L. Drake, Jr. Network Theory Ltd. 0-9541617-6-9 Python license
The R Reference Manual - Base Package - Volume 1 The R Development Core Team Network Theory Ltd. 0-9546120-0-0 Old GNU manual license
The R Reference Manual - Base Package - Volume 2 The R Development Core Team Network Theory Ltd. 0-9546120-1-9 Old GNU manual license
GNU Bash Reference Manual Chet Ramey, Brian Fox Network Theory Ltd. 0-9541617-7-7 Old GNU manual license
Comparing and Merging Files with GNU diff and patch D. MacKenzie, P. Eggert, R. Stallman Network Theory Ltd. 0-9541617-5-0 GNU Free Documentation License
The GNU Scientific Library Reference Manual M. Galassi, et al. Network Theory Ltd. 0-9541617-0-X GNU Free Documentation License
An Introduction to R W.N. Venables, et al. Network Theory Ltd. 0-9541617-4-2 Old GNU manual license
GNU Octave Manual John W. Eaton Network Theory Ltd. 0-9541617-2-6 Old GNU manual license
Version Management with CVS Per Cederqvist, et al. Network Theory Ltd. 0-9541617-1-8 Old GNU manual license
Vi IMproved -- Vim Steve Oualline New Riders 0735710015 Open Publication License, Version 1.0 (no options exercised) (See note below)
Dive Into Python (work still in progress) Mark Pilgrim GNU Free Documentation License
How to Think Like a Computer Scientist: Learning with Python, First Edition Allen Downey, Jeff Elkner and Chris Meyers Green Tea 0971677506 GNU Free Documentation License
Advanced Linux Programming, First Edition Mark Mitchell, Jeffery Oldham, and Alex Samuel New Riders 0-757-1043-0 Open Publication License, Version 1.0 (no options exercised) (See note below)
The Zope Book, First Edition Amos Latteier and Michel Pelletier New Riders 0-7357-1137-2 Open Publication License, Version 1.0 (no options exercised)
Linux Device Drivers, Second Edition Alessandro Rubini and Jonathan Corbet O'Reilly and Associates 0-596-00008-1 GNU Free Documentation License (See note below)
Effective awk Programming, Third Edition Arnold Robbins O'Reilly and Associates 0-596-00070-7 GNU Free Documentation License
GNU Autoconf, Automake, and Libtool Gary V. Vaughan, Ben Elliston, Tom Tromey, Ian Lance Taylor New Riders 1-57870-190-2 Open Publication License, Version 1.0 (no options exercised)
Debian GNU/Linux: Guide to Installation and Usage (Currently out-of-print) John Goerzen and Ossama Othman New Riders 0-7357-0914-9 GNU General Public License
GTK+/GNOME Application Development Havoc Pennington New Riders 0-7357-0078-8 Open Publication License, Version 1.0 (no options exercised)
Open Source Development with CVS Karl Fogel and Moshe Bar Paraglyph Press 1932111816 GNU General Public License
Programming from the Ground Up Jonathan Bartlett Bartlett Publishing 0975283847 GNU Free Documentation License
Note on Vi IMproved -- Vim:
The 2001 printing of this book failed to list the license notification properly. This printed edition says it is a proprietary book. The publisher has assured us that this was purely a printing error and that the intended license is the Open Publication License, Version 1.0, with no options exercised. Their errata (in PDF format) confirms this.
Note on Advanced Linux Programming, First Edition:
The June 2001 printing of this book failed to list the license notification properly. This printed edition says it is a proprietary book. The publisher has assured us that this was purely a printing error and that the intended license is "Open Publication License, Version 1.0, No options exercised". Their errata page confirms this. They have assured us that the next printing will have the corrected license.
Note on Linux Device Drivers, Second Edition:
The printed edition failed to properly apply the GNU FDL; a copy of the GNU FDL is missing, and the license notice is not complete. O'Reilly will fix these problems in the next printing.

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Updated: $Date: 2006/05/22 11:09:26 $ $Author: wkotwica $