Rating: 
Summary: Bring Your Clue Stick
Review: To begin this book in style, you will want to skip straight ahead to Richard Stallman's chapter, then read the rest at your leisure (or else you won't know anything about the truth behind all of this). Most of the people who wrote this book (not to mention those who read it) are in serious need of a clue-by-four.To begin, ``open source'' is just a buzzword created by ESR and others to seduce Big Business. The proper term is ``free software''. The Free Software Movement has been in effect for more than a decade. Also, Linus Torvalds is not the magical inventor of an OS that everyone makes him out to be. Linus wrote the first versions of a kernel (Linux) which was later placed into an operating system (GNU) in order to make it fully operational. GNU began loooong before Linux did (the GNU Project and the Free Software Foundation were begun by Richard Stallman, and thus was born the Free Software Movement), and AFAIK, very little of the code in Linux was written by Linus at this point, relatively speaking. Thus, the extremely poor rating is due to the intense misinformation spread by the various authors and, indeed, the editors. Those that are already in the know about free software likely won't need this book, though it may prove interesting. For the intended audience, however, this book is a complete and total lose.
Rating: 
Summary: Free software at critical junction betw. idealism & commerce
Review: Why shell out the 20 Euro for this tome? Because it got submissions from some of the major figures from different corners of the scene that is described by some as free software and by some as open source world, depending on what position they take regarding to freedom and commercialization. Plus the time is right now, at a time when the mainstream industry started to embrace it, and to commercially use it. Time will tell if there will be a stable balance between commercial interests and those people who simply enjoy programming and like to share their results (like I do). To make it work, future affairs will have to be handled in a way that both sides gain - simply treating the Internet's volunteers as free of cost labour will face opposition and won't work as the 100% free gospel won't. (that's why I stick with the BSD camp) I have to stop now and read more .. :-)
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