June 10, 2026
Booked, bothered, and broke
Textbooks Should Be Free
Professors gave away a hit textbook and the comments instantly turned into a money fight
TLDR: A popular free online textbook is being held up as proof that students want cheaper, better learning materials instead of overpriced school books. The comments turned that into a bigger fight over whether knowledge should be free, whether creators still need pay, and why textbook pricing makes everyone furious.
Two professors from the University of Wisconsin-Madison put their book, Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces, online for free and the internet basically said: finally, someone said it. Their big argument is simple enough for anyone who has ever cried at a campus bookstore: textbooks are wildly overpriced, constantly repackaged into “new editions,” and too often not even that great. And people clearly wanted this — the book has racked up more than half a million downloads and millions of page views.
But the real show is in the comments, where the wholesome story of free learning immediately became a spicy debate about who should pay for knowledge. One commenter went full sarcasm with “Everything should be free,” mocking the idea that writers should spend years working for nothing. Another charged in with the nuclear take that copyright itself kills creativity and that getting rid of it would make books better and more plentiful. Then came the practical middle ground: yes, free books are amazing, but authors still deserve to be paid if they want to be. That comment had the energy of the one sensible friend trying to calm a family dinner fight.
Meanwhile, the side characters were thriving. One reader proudly said they paid for the book anyway because they loved it, which is almost the most flattering review possible. Another used the moment to plug their own free quantum mechanics book, because of course they did. And one veteran of student life dropped a classic college survival tip: buy cheap international editions and dodge the shiny overpriced versions. In other words, everyone agrees textbook prices are absurd — they just can’t agree whether the hero is free access, fair pay, or a very determined used-book hustler.
Key Points
- •The article presents *Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces* as a free online textbook developed by Remzi and Andrea Arpaci-Dusseau while teaching operating systems at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
- •The post states that the book's chapters were downloaded more than 500,000 times since 2012 and that its website received nearly 3 million page views in the previous year.
- •The article argues that traditional computer science textbooks are often too expensive, commonly costing more than $100.
- •It says frequent new editions undermine the used-book market and help sustain sales of new textbooks.
- •The author contends that while some computer science textbooks are excellent, many are mediocre, and students instead want high-quality, low-cost books.