[aclug-L] Re: question

[Tom Hull <thull@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Kirk Lancaster wrote:
> 
> I saw "rebel code" by Glyn Moody at B&N recently,
> purchased it, and just finished reading it.  I think it
> does a good job of discussing the "history of Linux"
> up to early 2001 (February? May?) and is written
> for a general audience, but I would like feedback
> from you.  Is this a good book for educating people
> about Linux and open source software? (i.e. Is it
> accurate? fairly complete? persuasive?)  Is there a
> better book for this purpose?

I think Moody's book is the best of the bunch, by a fairly
large margin. I read half-a-dozen similar books over the
past two years. "Open Sources" is useful for its historical
documents. Linus Torvalds' "Just for Fun" is fun, but short
on anything technical. Bob Young's "Under the Radar" is
actually pretty good once you get past the finance sections,
which are probably overripe right now. Peter Wayner's book
has a lot of mistakes, is repetitive and overwrought, but
has more detail on BSD. Donald Rosenberg's "Open Source"
is mostly on business and licensing issues. A lot of folks
like Pekka Himanen's "The Hacker Ethic"; I wasn't able to
finish it, but suspect it has some value to it. (Same for
Lawrence Lessig's books.) Russell Pavlichek's "Embracing
Insanity" is badly written, full of cliches, worthless
(assuming the first 30 pages are representative). I
haven't seen Evan Leibovitch's book, but it probably
covers similar ground to Rosenberg and Pavlichek. Eric
Raymond's "Cathedral and the Bazaar" is also useful
background.

-- 
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