“This book is subtitled How Red Hat changed the software
business – and took Microsoft by surprise. However, that is a
slightly misleading statement about the contents. More
accurately, this book is a series of stories about both Red Hat and
the Open Source/free software movement in general (and Linux in
particular) woven together very naturally to make an interesting
tale.“
“The book starts out at the point when Red Hat were trying to
secure some venture capital in the early months of 1998. This
naturally leads to a recounting of meetings with Benchmark Capital
(a Silicon Valley venture capital firm), Intel and Netscape.
Chapters 2, 3 and 4 cover this story quite naturally, giving an
introduction to the concept of free (as in speech not beer)
software along the way. This is not the story of how everything
went swimmingly and was done over a cup of coffee. There are
accounts of how the VC firms tried to push Intel out of the deal
and then how Netscape stepped in and was willing to compromise.
Chapter 4, in particular, covers (in a few brief pages) how first
IBM, then Dell and Compaq courted companies offering services such
as Red Hat (OK .. the actual chronology may have been different,
but that’s the order they’re presented in the book).”
“Chapters 5 and 6 are basically all about Netscape. Beginning
with accounts of executive level meetings at the companies where
the decision to release the source code was first discussed, we are
led through the whole saga up to the present day. This includes a
very coherent discussion about licensing issues and the proprietary
software that was already in the Netscape code. What we have here
is a layman’s account of why it is taking so long for Mozilla to
walk out the door.”