Project Gutenberg: Free Books That Won't Break Your CI

Remember that moment when you search for "War and Peace" in the public domain, and you get a site with 47 trackers and an autoplay video? Project Gutenberg, the oldest digital library, decided to remind us that the internet can be different. They revamped the interface, added full-text search, and made books load faster than your package manager.

Now it's not just an archive of TXT files — it's almost a full-fledged app. You can search by author, title, language, and even ISBN, if you're one of those who remembers it by heart. Best of all: no captchas, no "subscribe to newsletter". The devs clearly understand the pain of a user who just wants to download "Don Quixote" without going through a quest.

Of course, there's a catch: some books are still in a format your e-reader doesn't support. But hey, it's like legacy code — better than nothing. Everything is completely free and DRM-free. You can even copy the text and paste it into your project — the license allows it.

METABYTE studio comment: Project Gutenberg is a great example of how an old project can evolve without losing its soul. It reminds us that sometimes it's better to improve what exists than to write yet another wheel. Though we do love wheels too.