Free Books from Other Publishers
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, and browse them online. We have been doing this since around 1986.
Some commercial publishers are also publishing free books. (Like ours, these books are free in the sense of freedom; the commercially printed copies are sold.) On this page, we list the ones we have come across. If you find out about a free book that is not listed here, please let us know by writing to <webmasters@gnu.org>.
Some of these publishers (e.g., Network Theory Ltd) do not trade directly. Their books can be obtained from many suppliers throughout the world, but please don't order them, or any other book, from Amazon!
Free books in English
(#English)Title | Author | Publisher | ISBN 13 | License |
---|---|---|---|---|
The Guile 2.0 Reference Manual | The Guile Developers | Network Theory Ltd | 978-1906966157 | GNU Free Documentation License |
The Org Mode 9.1 Reference Manual (for Org 9.1.6) | Carsten Dominik and others | 12th Media Services | 978-1680921656 | GNU Free Documentation License |
The PostgreSQL 9.0 Reference Manual, in four volumes | The PostgreSQL Global Development Group | Network Theory Ltd | 978-1906966-{041,058,065,072} | Modified BSD license |
Perl Language Reference Manual (for Perl 5.12.1) | Larry Wall and others | Network Theory Ltd | 978-1906966027 | GNU General Public License |
GNU Octave 4.0 Reference Manual, in two volumes | John W. Eaton, David Bateman, Søren Hauberg, Rik Wehbring | Samurai Media Ltd | 978-9888381-{050,067} | Old GNU manual license |
How Wikipedia Works | Phoebe Ayers, Charles Matthews, and Ben Yates | No Starch Press | 978-1593271763 | GNU Free Documentation License |
Valgrind 3.3 — Advanced Debugging and Profiling for GNU/Linux applications | J. Seward, N. Nethercote, J. Weidendorfer and the Valgrind Dev Team | Network Theory Ltd | 978-0954612054 | GNU Free Documentation License |
An Introduction to GCC | Brian J. Gough | Network Theory Ltd | 978-0954161798 | GNU Free Documentation License |
The Python Language Reference Manual (for Python 3.2) | Guido van Rossum, Fred L. Jr. Drake (Editor) | Network Theory Ltd | 978-1906966140 | Python license |
Python 2.7.10 Tutorial: An Introduction to Python | Guido van Rossum, Python Dev team | Samurai Media Ltd | 978-9888381005 | Python license |
R Reference Manual — Base Package, in two volumes | The R Development Core Team | Network Theory Ltd | 978-0954612-{009,016} | Old GNU manual license |
An Introduction to R, 2nd ed. (for R 2.9.0) | William N. Venables, David M. Smith and the R Dev Team | Network Theory Ltd | 978-0954612085 | Old GNU manual license |
GNU Bash Reference Manual (for Bash 3.2) | Chet Ramey, Brian Fox | Network Theory Ltd | 978-0954161774 | Old GNU manual license |
Comparing and Merging Files with GNU diff and patch | D. MacKenzie, P. Eggert, R. Stallman | Network Theory Ltd | 978-0954161750 | GNU Free Documentation License |
Gnu Scientific Library Reference Manual, 3rd ed. (for GSL 1.12) | Brian Gough (Editor) | Network Theory Ltd | 978-0954612078 | GNU Free Documentation License |
Version Management with CVS (for CVS 1.11.22) | Per Cederqvist, et al. | Network Theory Ltd | 978-0954161712 | Old GNU manual license |
Dive Into Python 3 | Mark Pilgrim | aPress | 978-1430224150 | Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License |
Think Python, 2nd ed. (for Python 3) | Allen Downey | O'Reilly Media | 978-1491939369 | GNU Free Documentation License |
Advanced Linux Programming, 1st ed. | Mark Mitchell, Jeffery Oldham, Alex Samuel | Sams Publishing | 978-0735710436 | Open Publication License, Version 1.0 (no options exercised) (See note below) |
The Zope Book | Amos Latteier and Michel Pelletier | Sams Publishing | 978-0735711372 | Open Publication License, Version 1.0 (no options exercised) |
Linux Device Drivers, 3rd ed. | Jonathan Corbet, Greg Kroah-Hartman, Alessandro Rubini | O'Reilly Media | 978-0596005900 | Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 License |
Effective awk Programming, 4th ed. |
Arnold Robbins | O'Reilly Media | 978-1491904619 | GNU Free Documentation License |
GNU Autoconf, Automake, and Libtool | Gary V. Vaughan, Ben Elliston, Tom Tromey, Ian Lance Taylor | New Riders | 978-1578701902 | Open Publication License, Version 1.0 (no options exercised) |
Debian GNU/Linux: Guide to Installation and Usage | John Goerzen and Ossama Othman | New Riders | 978-0735709140 | GNU General Public License |
GTK+/GNOME Application Development | Havoc Pennington | Sams Publishing | 978-0735700789 | Open Publication License, Version 1.0 (no options exercised) |
Open Source Development with CVS | Karl Fogel and Moshe Bar | Paraglyph Press | 978-1932111811 | GNU General Public License |
Producing Open Source Software: How to Run a Successful Free Software Project | Karl Fogel | O'Reilly Media | 978-0596007591 | Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License |
Programming from the Ground Up | Jonathan Bartlett | Orange Grove Texts Plus | 978-1616100643 | GNU Free Documentation License |
Managing Projects with GNU Make, 3rd ed. | Robert Mecklenburg | O'Reilly Media | 978-0596006105 | GNU Free Documentation License |
Using Samba, 3rd ed. | Robert Eckstein, Jay Ts, Gerald Carter | O'Reilly Media | 978-0596002565 | GNU Free Documentation License |
Version Control with Subversion | Ben Collins-Sussman, Brian W. Fitzpatrick, C. Michael Pilato | Independently published | 978-1973363538 | Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License |
Motif Programming Manual (O'Reilly Vol. 6A, for Motif 2.1) | Antony Fountain, Jeremy Huxtable, Paula Ferguson, Dan Heller | O'Reilly Media | 978-1565920163 | Open Publication License, Version 1.0 or later |
Motif Reference Manual (O'Reilly Vol. 6B, for Motif 2.1) | Antony Fountain, Paula Ferguson | O'Reilly Media | 978-1565926547 | Open Publication License, Version 1.0 or later |
Git Magic (Also available in other languages) | Ben Lynn | N/A | N/A | GNU General Public License version 3 or later |
Free books in Spanish
(#Spanish)Title | Author | Publisher | ISBN 13 | License |
---|---|---|---|---|
Guía Compacta de Org-Mode | Carsten Dominik (translated by David Arroyo Menéndez) |
N/A | N/A | GNU Free Documentation License |
Manual de Referencia de Bash, para Bash 5.1 (pdf, html) (source) |
Brian Fox, Chet Ramey (translated by Jorge Maldonado Ventura) |
N/A | N/A | GNU Free Documentation License |
- 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.