The Cathedral and the Bazaar

When Hemos mentioned this book, at first I didn't realize that it had actually been published in dead-tree form - or more precisely, I didn't realize it hadn't been published in dead-tree form long ago, and I was wondering why he was talking about reviewing it now. Obviously I spend too much time on the net when I can no longer distinguish between webpages and books. The Cathedral and the Bazaar author Eric S. Raymond pages 268 publisher O'Reilly and Associates rating 9/10 reviewer Michael Sims ISBN 1565927249 summary Several of ESR's essays on open source and Linux; dressed, stuffed, and garnished Probably most slashdot readers have at least heard of Eric Raymond. This book collects several of his more famous essays into a single volume.

Raymond is intelligent and literate, and makes his arguments about the benefits of open source in ways that are calculated to convince corporations that there's more money to be made with open code than closed in many situations. He's one of the relatively few people who can write first-hand accounts of long-running, successful open source projects, and can write authoritatively about the hacker community in the early days of the internet.

The essays make good reading, if you're into computers and software at all. Sometimes there are people who are good at something who nevertheless can't write about it. Bill Gates is probably a good example - he's good at what he does, but he sure as hell can't convey his knowledge. I've read Andy Grove's book about his management experiences, and I wasn't impressed by it either - again, it seemed like there was someone who knew how to do something but couldn't explain it (and haven't we all had teachers like that?).

Raymond is not only a gifted hacker, but an excellent writer as well. He manages to convey information about the culture one has to manage, which turns out to be very good way to teach someone how to manage it; or at least it was for me, anyway.

These essays are pretty much required reading, I would say, for anyone running a software company today. If you want to set up an open source project, there's no better information available. The early history of hacking is interesting and of course he's got a good handle on how and why Linux has been so successful.

The only difficulty I have in recommending the book, in fact, is that it's available at no cost on ESR's website. Yes, the essays are all material that's previously been available - indeed, I'd read several of them before. Supposedly they've been revised and expanded for the book - I'm not going to scan them line-by-line to check - but certainly the ideas expressed in the essays haven't changed from the web versions. Frugal readers might easily decide that free documents off a website make better reading than a purchased book.

On the other hand, a book is easier to read than a web page in most cases. And you can't give webpages as holiday presents to your pointy-haired boss who wants to keep your company's code totally closed. So perhaps there's a market for it after all...

The book contains the essays "A Brief History of Hackerdom", "The Cathedral and the Bazaar", "Homesteading the Noosphere", "The Magic Cauldron", "The Revenge of the Hackers", and "How to Become a Hacker".

Pick this book up at fatbrain.