About

What kind of library this is

Here you find books that cannot be locked away.

Each one is published under the free CC BY-SA 4.0 license — read them, download them, share them, translate them, republish them. The only requirement: name the source and pass the freedom on. There is no «full version for a fee»: what you see is the full version.

The series is written in full and released as each book becomes ready — the way books used to be published before the age of deadlines: when the text is ready, not when the calendar demands. Each book passes through an editorial pipeline: sources checked against originals, quotations verified word by word, footnotes kept honest. If we've made a mistake somewhere, write to us — we'll fix it and thank you in the next version. Free books have a luxury unavailable to paper: they can get better after publication.

Who Comandante FolkUp is

The books of the series are signed with this name. Who stands behind it does not matter; what matters is that under this name knowledge walks free. Others have done the same: Pessoa handed his letters over to his heteronyms, Banksy left his work on walls without a face. The name is not a mask but a way to move the author's figure off the path the reader is walking.

Behind the texts stands a living person with twenty-five years of practice in software and teams — and an editorial room where a human works alongside artificial intelligence. We do not hide this; we consider it part of the method: the era these books are about has begun in our own editorial room as well. A human is responsible for every word.

Why all this

We believe that knowledge locked behind a paywall works worse than knowledge that circulates from hand to hand. This idea is set out in the Declaration of Unenclosed Knowledge — the manifesto of our ecosystem. The library is its practical proof: not a call to share, but the act of sharing itself.

The FolkUp ecosystem grows around the library: articles on what stayed outside the covers of the books, and encyclopedias — open collections of knowledge on the series' topics. All under the same free licenses.

Where to start

With the first book — or with any that catches your eye by its cover. Free books do not need to be read in order: the door is open from any side.