Free Software, Free Society: Selected Essays of Richard M. Stallman

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Introduction by Lessig - final paras:

I don’t know Stallman well. I know him well enough to know he is a hard man
to like. He is driven, often impatient. His anger can flare at friend as easily as foe.
He is uncompromising and persistent; patient in both.

Yet when our world finally comes to understand the power and danger of code—
when it finally sees that code, like laws, or like government, must be transparent to
be free—then we will look back at this uncompromising and persistent programmer
and recognize the vision he has fought to make real: the vision of a world where
freedom and knowledge survives the compiler. And we will come to see that no
man, through his deeds or words, has done as much to make possible the freedom
that this next society could have.

We have not earned that freedom yet. We may well fail in securing it. But
whether we succeed or fail, in these essays is a picture of what that freedom could
be. And in the life that produced these words and works, there is inspiration for
anyone who would, like Stallman, fight to create this freedom