Open Source Book a Collective Effort

Hairy1 writes "The New Zealand Open Source Society has begun a project to write a book to put the case for open source use in business and government. There is a need for a book which clearly puts the case for using open source, and provides a clear migration plan. Already five authors and several reviewers have stepped forward to commit time to writing the book. However, other authors and reviewers would be welcome to join the project."

Comments

A more difficult task....

[monadicIO]

..... is going to be to get all those CEO/CFO/CTO types to actually read something like this.

Re:This should go further

[Coke in a Can]

"but not the typical ebook. we should have an open source reader which can be used to create books that are more compatible in content. Use this as a starting point to 'ram the message home'"

We already have two. They're called ASCII and HTML.

Nothing personal but (insert insult here)

[Pharmboy]

Many of you are making it sound as if it is a software project. Everyone puts in how it should work and then majority rules. Sadly, that is how it may turn out.

What open source needs is MARKETING. It is no longer whether or not its better or not, its the fact that not enough decision makers understand what OSS really is. We often focus too much on factual representation, and not enough on presentation.

Put it in whatever format the market dictates, write it to be easy to read by the persons you want to read it. Give examples that apply to their situation. This means that people that are already OSS advocates will probably not like the book, which is fine. The goal, it appears, is NOT to reaffirm what hackers think, its to expose decision makers to an alternative to proprietary systems where licensing can change with every necessary update.

If you and I love it, then its probably not written very well for its intended market.