Review:Open Sources

I'm the first to admit that I'm the last person who should write a book review. In fact, this is the first one I've posted on Slashdot. Frankly I don't read books any more- just web pages. I just don't have time- plus that whole paper thing doesn't appeal to me any more. But when "Open Sources:Voices from the Open Source Revolution" got here, I had no option but to read it. Immediately. Edited by Chris DiBona, Sam Ockman and Mark Stone, it's a collection of essays from Open Source glitterati with an impressive roster of names including ESR, RMS, Linus, Larry Wall, Bob Young, Tim O'Reilly, Bruce Perens and more. It's a wonderful read, hit the link below to read the rest. Open Sources

Each of these essays is an interesting read. The book starts off with ESRs 'Brief History of Hackerdom' which is an enjoyable read, although its a history that most of us are already familiar with. Marshall Kirk McKusick's piece follows with an in depth history of UNIX and BSD. Much of this information was new to me- it was one of my favorite sections in the book. And Linus talks about the Linux Kernel.

RMSs piece is, well, an RMS piece. Its interesting, but nothing new if you're familiar with RMS and the FSF. But if you aren't its an excellent little primer on the topic And that is important considering that this books target isn't as much the hacker, as it is the hacker's Boss. This is especially obvious after reading the articles by Bob Young and Michael Tiemann. Each article is an interesting look at the Open Source movement, but told through the eyes of the businessman.

Bruce Perens defines Open Source, A band of folks from Netscape including Tom Paquin talk about Mozilla from Netscape's perspective, and ESR writes a nice bit on the movement from the other side.

But my personal favorite bit is 'Diligence, Patience, and Humility' by Larry Wall. It seems curiously out of place in this book. Most every essay is a good read for "Your Boss" but this one is clearly for the artsy hacker type. Wall talks about communication, programming, philosophy, and pretty much anything else that comes to his mind in this humorous but insightful rambling essay. It alone was worth the price of admission.

So anyway, if your boss asks you what Open Source is, this is the book. If he ask you why it is, this is also the book. If you want to read an interesting collection of essays by the people who made this movement happen, this is the book. It is one of the few books that I'm glad I own- taking its place besides my few other favorite (mostly Dave Barry, Douglas Adams, and various O'Reilly Animal) dead tree editions. Highly recommended. A 9 out of 10.

If you are interested in purchasing this book, click here.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction
Chris DiBona, Sam Ockman, and Mark Stone

A Brief History of Hackerdom
Eric S. Raymond

Twenty Years of Berkeley Unix: From AT&T-Owned to Freely Redistributable
Marshall Kirk McKusick

The Internet Engineering Task Force
Scott Bradner

The GNU Operating System and the Free Software Movement
Richard Stallman

Future of Cygnus Solutions: An Entrepreneur's Account
Michael Tiemann

Software Engineering
Paul Vixie

The Linux Edge
Linus Torvalds

Giving It Away: How Red Hat Software Stumbled Across a New Economic Model and Helped Improve an Industry
Robert Young

Diligence, Patience, and Humility
Larry Wall

Open Source as a Business Strategy
Brian Behlendorf

The Open Source Definition
Bruce Perens

Hardware, Software, and Infoware
Tim O'Reilly

Freeing the Source: The Story of Mozilla
Jim Hamerly and Tom Paquin with Susan Walton

The Revenge of the Hackers
Eric S. Raymond

Appendix A: The Tanenbaum-Torvalds Debate

Appendix B: The Open Source Definition, Version 1.0

Comments

Great read - but where's the animal?

[Eric Wayte]

I just picked up Open Sources and have found it to be a great read. Kirk McKusick is an excellent writer and his history of BSD is required reading for the Linuxen out there.

One thing does bother me about this book - where's the animal? O'Reilly is starting to not use animals on the cover (Cracking DES is another example) and I think this bothers me more than them making money off Open Source / Free Software. :-)

Michael Tiemann's Piece is available online

[IIO]

Just want to mention that Michael Tiemann's piece on Cygnus Solutions is available online from the cygnus main website. It's a very well-written piece.

Two important pieces that's LACKING from the book are, IMHO,
1. Donald Knuth, TeX, Metafont, And The Art Of Computer Programming
2. Peter Deutsch, PostScript, GhostScript, And Alladin.

--
IIO, my fifth post to /.