[ Thanks to AV for
this link. ]
“I spent a solid day recently plowing through a
remarkable book by one of the early luminaries of the Linux age,
Eric S. Raymond. On its face, the idea of reading computer history
seems like one of the worse uses of several hours that most
non-geeks can imagine, especially one that’s not even recent. By
and large it’s hard to disagree with that idea. But this book was
different. I’m a picky reader, but found that once I got going with
Raymond’s tome it was hard to put down. The author is very capable,
his observations just as piercing now as they were originally, and
the book goes very fast. More remarkably, Raymond manages to be
equally good at summarizing both complex technical ideas and
complicated concepts from the social sciences, and adds just enough
of an “I was there” aspect to give the book credibility without
turning into an autobiography. If you’re interested in or care
about Linux or open source, both their history and where the OSS
movement is going, you should read this book.“First published in late 1999 and revised in 2001, The Cathedral
& The Bazaar is one of the most important paper volumes about
Linux and the Open Source revolution. C&B is structured as a
series of essays recording the observations of a self-described
“tribal historian and resident ethnographer” within the OSS/hacker
worlds. Each essay addresses a key aspect of the OSS movement: its
origins in the original hacker movement (A Brief History of
Hackerdom), the open source development model (The Cathedral &
The Bazaar), the hacker world’s ethics and ethos (Homesteading the
Noosphere), the OSS world’s economic base (The Magic
Cauldron)…”