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Embracing Insanity
There's a continuing avalache of technical/OS and other books and manuals, but very few that remind us why we should care about this stuff and, better yet, give us the tools, arguments and data to convince others.
"Embracing Insanity," by Russell C. Pavlicek (Linux Evangelist for Compaq's Professional Services organization, and 20-year computer industry veteran) is funny, smart and warm-hearted, something one could hardly expect from a book on the origins, meaning and history of the open source movement. Even though it's written by an OS veteran, it seems to be written mostly for the non-technical who need to come to terms with a movement that is both evolutionary and revolutionary.
Many of the people reading this will know some or all of the material in '"Embracing Insanity: Open Source Software Development."
This is a book to give your parents if they are wondering what you're doing up in your room all night, your teachers if they haven no clue as to why software has political, social and cultural implications, and perhaps as important, your boss, as he or she wonders why they need to understand open source and free software if they really want to do business in the 21st century.
It's not great literature, and doesn't purport to be. It is written with great heart, clarity and authority. "Embracing Insanity" is a history, a primer and a social biography. It explains what to do regarding OS, and what not to do, the sometimes bizarre nature and traditions of the OS culture.This is not a book that will confuse or scare off non-techies with language that isn't explained, or technical information taken for granted. Quite the contrary. It brings OS to life in a way that is completely accessible, explaining it's significance as a business and social model for many kinds of institutions, and its profoundly non-technological promise.
Pavlicek traces the growth of the OS and the free software movement, but he catches the weird (insane, perhaps) history and spirit of this particularly geek-driven phenomena. He sees OS as the liberation of the geek culture, for which he obviously has great feeling and empathy. One of his very neat ideas is that OS software development is "Essential Disruptive Technology," one of a hand of particular technologies that come out of nowhere to alter the direction of technical progress, change the rules, and catch all of the regular players off guard.
"...it is not so much that Open Source ventures onto technical ground that has never been explored before. But it does bring the rules and expectations from one area of technology (large computer systems) into another area (PC systems). And, most importantly, it does so in a way that defies the norms of the computer industry..." OS, he writes, is a new way of thinking about technology and computing, especially desktop computing.
"Embracing Insanity" is an proselytizing book (with a foreword by our own Robin "roblimo" Miller, Editor-In-Chief for the Open Source Development Network (formerly Andover.net). It's clear that Pavlickek has been trying to explain to people for years why anybody should care about OS, so he's written this book to make sure the argument continues and widens. "Embracing Insanity" is the view of a true believer about a movement that is widely misunderstood, and whose commercial and social significance is still lost on much of the non-geek world.
Pavlicek claims that OS explodes the myth of the anti-social geek. In a world where dread stereotypes of geeks pop up on the evening news nightly, nothing, he says, could be farther from the truth. Geeks are quite social, they just have a different set of priorities. The OS community, he says, uses a number of ways to sociall connect with each other, from basic Net tools like email and IRC, mailing lists and weblogs to the rapidly-proliferating OS news and discussion sites (like Linux Today). In the Linux community, bands of people come together all the time to talk about OS software and, in some cases, the free software movement.
Pavlicek covers some well-known OS history, but he also breaks some original ground, including when he talks about the moral values of OS beyond technology and software. One of the key values of OS and its community, he argues, is truth. "In a world where people are constantly exchanging ideas, evaluating concepts, and suggesting enhancements, it is vitally important that everyone speak the truth as he sees it. If someone fails to speak the truth, the process of creating software will be greatly impaired." The impact of anything less in the OS environment is devastating to the process of creating software. "If someone in charge of a piece of code willingly lies about how the code functions to other developers seeking to use that code, that person has caused great harm. Someone who lies to a development team could cost that team hundreds of even thousands of wasted hours of development. In that case, the liar has caused numerous individuals to waste precious hours of time chasing down a dead-end road."
There aren't too many media, social or political movements so dependent on truth or vulnerable to posturing, inaccuracies, hype and blatant falsehoods. Pavlicek explains why out this sometimes ill-tempered meticulousness is deeply rooted in geek culture, where mistakes have consequences, and where patience for fools and dissemblers is short. That could hardly be said of politics or media.
"Embracing Insanity" is an argument for OS, but Pavlicek bluntly spells out the business realities -- pro and con -- that underlie open source development. Is it good or bad for the bottom line, good or bad for the consumer, practical or not for everybody else? In addition to writing a primer of OS terms and names, he also dispels some myth and confusion. Lots of people don't know that Open Source isn't freeware, or that OS software isn't the same thing as public-domain software.
There aren't a lot of books coming out of the Open Source movement that you can hand to anyone with an interest in the future of technology -- that would cover a lot of people -- that so confidently captures the spirit, history and potential of one of the most interesting social and technological ideas in the world. OS may have started as a programming movement, but it has mushroomed well beyond that. Pavlicek grasps this big idea, even as many of his more technically-minded colleagues still resist it.
Geeks have had a hard time explaining the significance of OS to the world beyond. Now they don't have to. "Embracing Insanity" delivers on its promise to explain why society should care about this communal movement that seemed to come out of nowhere in response to the looming Microsoftization of the planet. It's almost a cliche in publishing to say a book is long overdue, but that's the perfect description here.
"Embracing Insanity" is the right gift for the people who have no idea what you're doing with your life, but may, for lots of important reasons, need or want to know.
Purchase this book at ThinkGeek.
is it anything like freebsd? is there a netbds? is it posix compliant? can it run linxu executables?
--
Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
[o]_O
And this has what to do with Enlightenment, specifically? Much like the earlier Star Wars/LEGO story being posted under the Games icon....
Last time it was out was in November 1999. I think Slashdot have got to put all the icons on the front page every 12 months or the Icons Union comes knocking...
D'you know there's an Internet Explorer icon as well? Makes a change from all the Borg ones.
D.
> ...and programmers stop earning the rediculous sums of money they do for their monkey work,
>they won't have the time or the enthusiasm for "contributing to the community"
I work as a programmer for a closed source company. I often lack enthusiasm at work because everything we do seems to be driven by making profit and getting code out the door as fast as we can.
In the evenings, I go home and write more code. This time, it is done on my own terms and the focus is on the code working well, and it's much more enjoyable and I am much more motivated and enthusiastic.
Explain how that fits your "gold rush" ideas, and come to think of it, explain why you describe ppls attitude to open source as a "gold rush" if you think it doesn't make money. That doesn't sound much like a gold rush to me.
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
Gee, if he went for a target audience even a little more specific than that, he wouldn't sell enough copies to justify writing the book.
--
The shareholder is always right.
First we had cornfusion with:
PC - Personal Computer, Professional Consultant, Politically Correct, or Programmable Controller (which has since become PLC or Programmable Logic Controller)
then
ATM - Automatic Teller Machine, Adobe Type Manager, and Asynchronous Transfer Mode,
Now we've got:
OS - Operating System, Open Source. I thought it was 'OSS' Open Source Software, which should have little interferance from Office of Strategic Services or Oracle Support Service. Otherwise Linux is an OSOS, and NT is just SoSo.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
If this book manages to demonstrate why software and ideas are different from real-life things (scarcity) and should therefore be free, I'm going to buy it.
I know this is going to sounds like flames spewing forth, but I think it needs to be said. Is anyone else sick of comments about typos in /. headlines?
Yeah, it's FreeBSD, not FreeBDS. Yes the name in the pres. poll was Ralph Nader, not Ralph Neder. You knew it, and so do I. Chances are, the /. Crew will notice it sooner or later too, and propmtly correct the mistake. I liken the annoyance of these posts to chat sessions where others correct your typos. It doesn't need to be pointed out. After all, how many typos can you find in the common comment thread? Should we correct all those too?
I am MuchTall
but I'm not going to explain it, noooo.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
This is a book to give your parents if they are wondering what you're doing up in your room all night,...
Are you kidding? I was doing what any normal, healthy, pubescent boy was doing... and praying like hell that my mother didn't walk in, and that Vivian Hsu would!!
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
The only thing that comes close, it seems to me, is "One of the key values of OS and its community, he argues, is truth." Uh, yeah. Truth is irrelevant in closed development. Or investment banking or lifeguarding. Who cares if the engineers building that bridge are honest and forthright with each other?
As for the rest of it, proving that "geeks" aren't all homicidal sociopaths and borrowing "disruptive technology" from another author don't wildly impress me.
BTW, while doing a Google search to find where "disruptive technology" was cribbed from, I found this definition:
A disruptive technology is a technology or innovation "that results in worse product performance, at least in the near-term...[It] brings to the market a very different value proposition than had been available previously...Products that are based on disruptive technologies are typically cheaper, simpler, smaller, and, frequently, more convenient to use. [But, they generally] underperform established products in mainstream markets." (Christensen, 1997, p.xv)
double standard: we have to preview a story before we can submit it as a news item to slashdot. why do the editors not have to do the same thing? peer review: do it, and the end product will be better.
--
Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
[o]_O
Your Linux news sites on OSDN are Linux.com and NewsForge. Slashdot is just News for Nerds. Stuff that matters.
And yes, both BSD and LSD came out of Berkeley.
Will I retire or break 10K?
You really need to read this book.
Here are just a few reasons why OSS will thrive, even if the supposed end of the gold rush comes (out of curiosity, what do you think will make that happen within ten years?):
1) People have generally the same amount of free time regardless of how much they make. When I was making 40k per year years ago, I had the same amount of free time as I do now - in fact I have slightly less because I fee some obligation to produce a lot for how much I get paid. The only difference is how many things you can buy and how you can spend your free time... indeed, if I was making a lot less I would probably travel less, leaving more time to work on OS projects.
2) There's a lot of interest in OS at the college level. These people already are not making any money, they just do it for fun. Why would that change?
3) If there was a crash, there would be a lot of people who had saved up enough to retire - a number of them might go on to work on OS projects in thier spare time.
4) If you look really far ahead at when current programmers finally retire at about 80 or 90 years old, why wouldn't they take up OSS projects as a side hobby? If you look ahead at what happens at people in OSS now grow older, with new people behind them, is it not really likley that the OSS movement will grow tremendously in the next few hundred years?
5) Trolls are always wrong about future events, being short sighted and ignorant.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
it's already survived more than a decade quite nicely, thank you. The GNU project was founded in 1984; open source development is even older than that. The kind of people who produced open source software BEFORE the hype will still do it AFTER the hype, it seems to me.
Besides, many open source developers DO get paid for what they do.
I've said this before. Free software, and to a lesser extent, Open Source software, correct a glaring defect in copyright law with respect to software -- it fails to establish a public domain.
Not public domain in the sense of "expired copyright", but public domain in the sense that copyright is supposed to place examples of the art into the public for study and learning. Copyright is supposed to promote disclosure. Publication of object code is not disclosure. It is non-disclosure. Software copyright is a failure in that it grants a monopoly on object code without the required disclosure of the corresponding source code.
Over 99% of the people who purchase a novel will do nothing more with it then use it for entertainment purposes. However, the remaining tiny percent of the purchasers are the next generation's authors. They will read the novel, and from it, learn the art of writing new novels.
Software doesn't work that way. No amount of study of Windows 98 will teach you how to write an operating system. That's because Windows 98 doesn't come with source code. You can use it, but you aren't allowed to understand it. This is no accident. It is the express desire of Microsoft that, in spite of their receiving the benefits of a copyright monopoly, that no one be allowed to read (the technical term for reading object code is "reverse engineering") their copyrighted work. Says so right in their license. Says so, with very few exceptions, in every single license of every single piece of proprietary software on the market.
Imagine if a young student expressed interest in becoming an author, and was told: Ok, but you will have to learn how to write from scratch. There are no examples for you to learn from. You cannot read pre-existing novels. You will have to learn plot development, character development, plot twists, all from scratch -- from textbooks. You must make absolutely sure that you never, ever read someone else's novel, because that would "contaminate" you, and you could never legally write a novel, because you could be sued by the people whose novels you had read.
I don't think that the result would be a "progress" in the art of writing novels. Why should we think that by making every potential software developer "start from scratch" leads to better software?
Now substitute "software" for "novels", and "reverse engineer" for "read", and you will get a statement that most legal departments of software companies would quickly agree with.
No wonder Free software and Open Source software are considered akin to a revolution. For the first time in the history of software the doors are thrown open. People are finally allowed, and encouraged to understand software instead of just use it. The fact that over 99% of the people who use Free and Open Source software will never modify it is irrelevant. What is important is that the tiny fraction of young people who are curious and want to learn how software works so that they can write their own, finally have the opportunity to examine and play with full fledged, working, professional quality software. And in the case of Free software, they have the right to reuse and redistribute their own work -- the modified code.
Free and Open Source software are revolutionary because they transcend the political limits of copyright law, and create what copyright law should have created, but failed to. A way "To promote the progress of science and useful arts."
Jon Katz intro:
"Russell Pavlicek, Linux and Open Source evangelist, has written an impassioned little book that purports to explain to the non-geek world in particular why they should care about the Open Source movement and the success of OS systems like Linux and FreeBSD. "
From ThinkGeek store:
List Price: $29.99
Save: $6.49 (21%)
Our Price: $23.50 (On Backorder)
I enjoy the irony that a book explaining and extolling the virtues of Open Source and free software must be purchased.
So, is there an open source version of this book, available for free download?
Perhaps there's an online version where people can edit and contribute new chapters, for the greater good -- many eyes creates better writing, no?
:)
-----
D. Fischer
ShoutingMan.com
Do you think maybe we could start including the list price in the summary box at the beginning of each review? I hate having to make several clicks at times just to check to see what the price of a book is on the linked book site (thinkgeek,fatbrain,etc.). It would be highly useful to me in deciding whether I want to go purchase this book immediately or want to wait for the library to pick it up.
--------- Beware the dragon, for you are crunchy and good with ketchup.
You need a better contract. Unless my time is being specifically paid for or I'm using company resources to create the work (code or book), they don't own it.
LetterJ
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
At least Jon knows that Open Source OSes INCLUDE BSD. As opposed to others, who say they are Open Source advocates, then only talks about Linux.
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
``Free software'' is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of ``free speech'', not ``free beer.'' The fact that it must be purchased is not ironic the fact that I could not buy a copy scan it in and post it on the net *is*. I think what O'Reilly does with books like the Debian book, the Samba book, and the net admin guide is a good comprimise OSS is not a very good model for writing a book but giving it away online can be. I read all three books online and then bought all but the Debian book. Just too much good stuff and I like the dead trees but I also like the fact that I knew what I was buying first. Read this to learn more
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
Sure, the UI and general workflow of a program you can duplicate pretty easily.
But what about learning how to design a a great colour correction algorithm? What about learning how Photoshop works efficently with files much bigger than availiable memory? In the case of IE, wouldn't it be nice to be able to see and learn from its rendering engine? Mozilla couldn't and had to build one from scratch.
Algorithmic and structural aspects to a program are one of the most important things to learn from, and knowing what other people have done can lead to someone else coming up with even better ideas in future products, or even in exisiting ones.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This is one of those books and Jon Katz rants that leans heavily on the perceived romantic, underground nature of Open Source and free software, but misses the technical issues greatly. Namely that most of the Great Works these movements are re-hashes of software that could have been used by our parents in the 1970s, leaving great figures in software and computer science wondering why we refuse to advance.
"If anyone had told me back then that getting back to embarrassingly primitive UNIX would be the great hope and investment obsession of the year 2000, merely because it's name was changed to Linux and its source code was opened up again, I never would have had the stomach or the heart to continue in computer science."
-- Jaron Lanier
Linus created Linux because he couldn't find a decent UNIX that he could get for his PC. It's not that he thought UNIX should be the future, or that UNIX is the ultimate operating system. Realize this. Somehow we've gotten ourselves all wrapped up in UNIX again, thinking that we're oh so cool, but we shouldn't have to be subjected to this nonsense. I think many technical gurus are similarly horrified that we've started a revolution that's given us exactly what we were trying to get away from (Jamie Zawinski and Rob Pike, for example). Stability, pre-emptive multitasking, memory protection, yes, they are all good things. But this doesn't equate to "Linux over Windows."
The bottom line is that it's a shame Linux and FreeBSD are the crown jewels of Open Source. Sigh.
My father (as an illustration of a broader community) might benefit from this book. He believes (like many non-geeks would, I guess) that Public Domain and Open Source are essentially the same. His experience with PD software was the atrocious crap (by almost any standard) he bought on a CD from a shopping mall some years ago and now vehemently denies he ever wasted money on. I don't know if this book will do it. I don't know if it is do-able. If this book preaches to the Yet-to-Be-Converted and does so in terms that makes them realise that there may be a better way, then this is A Good Thing.
You don't need to tell me about the value of OS, but I am a small fish in a small sea...