Samizdat (book)

Samizdat (book)

Samizdat: And Other Issues Regarding the 'Source' of Open Source Code is a book by Kenneth Brown, which was prereleased in May 2004 and was to be published later that year by the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution (AdTI). Among other controversial theses, the book suggests that the Linux kernel may have been created or distributed illegally and that open-source software may be generally subject to such abuses.

The book was greeted with almost universal derision by the technical world and was repudiated by many of its claimed sources.

The book claims that the Linux kernel was written using copied source code from Minix and other resources acquired improperly or possibly illegally by Linus Torvalds. It also suggests that one can never be certain of the origins of open source code, so similar misuse of copyrighted code may exist for other open-source projects. Finally, it claims that the GNU General Public License is bad for the economy.

The title is a reference to samizdat, a form of private circulation of suppressed literature within Soviet-bloc countries.

The prerelease has long been delisted from the distributor's site and the book was never given a proper release, although the prerelease PDF is readily available online.