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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 005.3
EAN num: 9780521707411
ISBN number: 0521707412
Label: Cambridge University Press
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 382
Printing Date: November 05, 2007
Publishing house: Cambridge University Press
Sale Popularity Level: 975164
Studio: Cambridge University Press
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Product Description:
The open source movement is a worldwide effort to promote an open style of software development more aligned with the accepted intellectual style of science than the proprietary modes of invention that have been characteristic of modern business. The idea is to keep the scientific advances created by software development openly available for everyone to use, understand, and improve. The very process of open source creation is highly transparent. This book addresses prominent projects in the open source movement, along with its enabling technologies, social characteristics, legal issues, business venues, and public and educational roles.
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Rated by buyers -
"Open Source" may seem mysterious to the majority of us - most open source projects are for internet infrastructure and used by systems administrators (those geeks in the back room) - but open source has been the well from which much of our growing knowledge has sprung. It is people working together, often for free, who have made the internet what it is today.
The very first question people often ask is, why would anybody work on something for free? The Apache Server code, for instance, had 80,000 lines of code with about 400 people contributing. The answer is the spirit of intellectual inquiry, of doing something valuable and knowing you are doing something valuable, but it's also a game. Open source software developers are playing the best computer game of all - how to change the world.
One of the strengths of this book is that it summarizes the majority of the research on the history of open source to date. All along, people have been documenting the history of Apache Servers, Mosaic, Netscape, Windows, HTML, JavaScript, Sendmail, MySQL, etc. There is primary documentation from the developers themselves on listservs, mailing lists and other online forums. There is a lot of secondary material as well, sometimes by developers but also by scholars, historians and critics. Most of this material is summarized here.
The ongoing controversy about open source projects - are they good or bad? are they safe or dangerous? - is basically null. Most open source projects are dual-license anyway (that means a version is free and another version, with technical support, costs money). Open source software is generally more robust because, "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow." If you don't know what that means, I'll translate (I was a technical writer in the computer industry): if enough people try to solve a problem, it will be solved much faster. That seems logical and it is. This is why Firefox has become popular despite Microsoft's near-monopoly with Internet Explorer.
There are many interesting details in this book, but I will discuss only one: the ability to "View Source" code for HTML web pages that very first appeared in the Mosaic browser in 1995. Mosaic was the very first "killer app," a computer application that soared into widespread use. The "View Source" function itself led to the exponential expansion of the internet because, suddenly, non-programmers like myself could copy the code from any page, alter it, and post a new website. When knowledge is shared it catches fire.
Overall, it is clearly written about a complex subject and will appeal to anyone that lives and works with computers and the internet.
Rated by buyers -
This book is an excellent overview of open source technology and policy. The author did a great job of creating a timeline of opensource technology which captures everything from kernel to application. This book would make a great addition to your library if you are a CIO looking to understand Open Source technology and policy.
--
Joe
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