Rating: 
Summary: Best history of open source
Review: A detailed, accurate story of the open source revolution, the best of the bunch.
Rating:
Summary: Truly Inspiring
Review: As a veteran programmer (on *nix, MS and Mac) I have read many "history of," "biography of," "story of" books, and I've enjoyed a lot of them. However, I can think of none that inspired me as much as this book. I thought it was very well-researched, incredibly entertaining, and, as I've already mentioned, truly inspiring. I don't see how any programmer could read this book and not want to go out and immediately develop something new, unique and revolutionary. For that matter, I don't see how anyone whose just interested in computers and technology could read this book and not want to immediately want to learn how to program. While I was reading it, I couldn't shut up about how great it was. Since I finished it, I find myself still thinking about it a lot--and I still can't shut up about it! I really don't think it matters what your techno-political background is, if you love programming, computers or just technology in general, I think you'll really enjoy this book.
Rating:
Summary: Truly Inspiring
Review: As a veteran programmer (on *nix, MS and Mac) I have read many "history of," "biography of," "story of" books, and I've enjoyed a lot of them. However, I can think of none that inspired me as much as this book. I thought it was very well-researched, incredibly entertaining, and, as I've already mentioned, truly inspiring. I don't see how any programmer could read this book and not want to go out and immediately develop something new, unique and revolutionary. For that matter, I don't see how anyone whose just interested in computers and technology could read this book and not want to immediately want to learn how to program. While I was reading it, I couldn't shut up about how great it was. Since I finished it, I find myself still thinking about it a lot--and I still can't shut up about it! I really don't think it matters what your techno-political background is, if you love programming, computers or just technology in general, I think you'll really enjoy this book.
Rating: 
Summary: The greatest history of Linux that (n)ever was
Review: As someone who has been tracking the progress of Linux since 1992, and has been using it continuously since 1994, I have been looking for some years now - at least since 1998, when Linux hit the mainstream news - who is going be the first to come up with a history of Linux; something among similar lines as Gleick did for chaos theory. Now we have the winner: Glyn Moody, a British IT journalist.Not always organized in a chronological order, Rebel Code follows the progress of Linux and several other open-source projects (XFree86, Sendmail, Perl, Apache, Samba...) from the grandfather of Linux, Unix, in late sixties; then we follow the stories of Andrew Tannenbaum's Minix system and Richard Stallman's project GNU through the eighties, until we finally arrive to the beginnings of Linux in 1991. From then on, we follow it rise and blossom, with its added functionalities, with the first contributors to the kernel starting to appear, and then the first Linux distributions. If the first half of the book deals mostly with technical topics, the second half - following the decision of Netscape Corporation to open the source code of their Web browser - is mostly concerned with the socio-economical issues of the open source model, the differences between it and the idea of free software; the huge initial success of the IPOs of open-source companies (Moody is much less vocal about the fact that they lost most of their values a year later), possible alternative uses of Linux (handheld and internet appliances) and musings on the possible future of the free/open source movement. Speaking of the latter, I miss a more thorough and independent analysis on whether the author sees the free/open source development model as a sustainable strategy or just a part of the dotcom craze. In that aspect, Rebel Code doesn't bring much one would not already know from the writing of Larry McVoy and Eric Raymond. I may not be alone here. Anybody who has already been tracking the progess of Linux - and I believe the majority of readership ought to be sought in this audience - will probably find some 80% of the book already familiar. The rest present the interviews the author conducted with some principal contributors throughout the 2000, and contained many new and interesting facts to me. The whole is packaged in a fairly pleasant and readable form. There is something about Moody that makes me uneasy, though. I cannot quite decide whether it is his intellectual criticism, or is he simply looking for some cheap drama. His best known writing on Linux before this book was his 1997 HotWired article titled "The Greatest OS That (N)ever Was" where he depicts his worrisome views about the future of Linux in dramatic tones ("...But Linux also sits at a critical juncture..."). In Rebel Code, he seems to be especially proud of his description of the schism that was threatening in Linux development in 1998, which "... nobody outside the Linux world noticed." Finally, there is no apologize for the complete omission of references. Linux is a child of Internet, its development was carried out in the open, and so it is perhaps the best documented OS ever. This book had a wonderful chance to become the authoritative list of resources concerning the Linux history, and flunked it. On the positive side, Rebel Code does have a decent index.
Rating:
Summary: Great book!
Review: For those interested in the origins of free software and Linux, this is a great book to read on. It describes chronologically all the people that became involved in the developing of linux operating system, the thoughts and beliefs of these greatest hackers.
Rating:
Summary: Pobody's Nerfect
Review: For those of you who have short attention spans, this book contains easily the most complete, detailed, researched, and clearly expounded history of Linux, the Free Software Foundation, the open source movement, the hacker ethic, and most everything else that has been going on with computer geeks since the 1950s. If you're at all interested by what's happening in the "free as in speech" technology sector, this book is a dramatic must-read. Go and pick it up now. If you're still with me, however, this book is absolutely plagued by the disease known as "technical writing". It's long been known that those who deal with computers and electronics on a day-to-day (hour-to-hour?) basis are not often the most linguistically inclined individuals. This "urban legend" is manifested predominantly in the work, taking its form through constant usage errors, many spelling errors, excruciatingly awkward prose (at times), and, although this is more of a non-issue considering the subject matter, just a little too much bias in one direction. Just to show that I'm not making this up, Glyn Moody frequently refers to "X Window", rather than "X Windows" (even though that's technically incorrect), "XFree86", "X11", or the "X Windowing System". Other similar, subtle annoyances occur throughout the book, but make no mistake: they don't obscure Moody's points indecipherably, they just annoy. One of the sentences that forced me to question Moody's bias was from Chapter 11: "If the history of Microsoft shows anything, it is a dogged determination to improve its often inadequate first attempts at writing software, and Internet Explorer is no exception." This sentence, inserted just after describing Microsoft's assertions to the U.S. Department of Justice as "shameless", leaves the reader no choice but to second-guess Moody's intentions. Is the book complete? Yes (at least, you won't find a more complete book around). Is the book perfect? No, and due to the frequency of grammatical and otherwise editorial errors, I have to reduce my would-be 5-star rating to 4. Do yourself a favor and read this (but if Perseus would release a corrected second edition, that'd be just fine with me :D). As a side note, I'm a user of Linux and a supporter of the open source model. When you do read this book, you'll be forced to form an opinion of your own on software patents and the whole lot. I encourage you not to take the RMS standpoint of "free [open] is better, always", nor do I encourage you to take the Bill Gates standpoint of "protected code is better, always". Draw a useful parallel between the two opinions.
Rating:
Summary: A lot more than Linux, A history of free software
Review: From the cover and the initial descriptions I've read about this book, I thought it was going to be centered around Linux. In reality, it covers most of the major open source projects. This book describes the beginnings of free software and many of the most innovative projects including: Linux, Perl, Xfree86, Apache, Emacs, Hurd, and many others. "Rebel Code" is well researched and goes in to just enough detail. Mr. Moody is careful not inundate the reader with too many details. Besides giving a history of Linux and open source, the book examines the motivating force behind the hacker ethic and the fruits of free software.
Rating:
Summary: Didn't find it very dry
Review: Glyn Moody does a great job of turning several related events into one over-arching narrative. His decription and analysis of the Open Source and Free Software movements is balanced and informative. All of the major players get their say (the personalities came across very clearly) and predict where they think events will take them. While Open Source attacks the heart of the Microsoft hegemony, it is also concerned with the closing of standards and architectures. My bias is that I believe in the personal computer, which is why my machine of choice is a Mac, over the network, I didn't need a Unix account when I was at Berkeley to communicate to home, I am from Berkeley and my friends and I were hacking basketball courts. It is really refreshing to read about events that are in your backyard, and Moody makes you feel like part of the action. I appreciate what real Hackers are doing and have been an observing of this phenomenon for a while, and Moody's work supplements Levy's Hackers and Wayner's Free For All very nicely.
Rating:
Summary: Great Outline of the Free/Open Source Software Movement
Review: Glyn Moody does an excellent job on showing how the Linux kernel came about as a culminating event of work started years before by other hackers. It explains how, from a humble bedroom and a 386, came the missing piece of the free software movement. The book shows how the free software movement and GNU/Linux are bringing computing back to a state where the users have control over what they are running, after 20 years of proprietary software ruling. I recommend this book for those interested in computing. Every professional would benefit from its reading.
Rating:
Summary: A fine background into today's Open Source
Review: Glyn Moody's book is an admirably complete history of Linux and the open source movement. It also manages to keep the pace going well, despite having to deal with a comparitively dry subject matter. The trouble is, because the movement is so disparate, the book has to jump from point to point and person to person rapidly. By trying to cover the people, the products and the philosophy behind open source, Rebel Code stretches itself a bit too thinly. It is thorough though, with historically correct-to-the-second Linux launches and loads of annotated email from the important parties. However, it doesn't explain itself thoroughly enough for a mainstream book. Someone with even a sketchy knowledge of computing will have no problems with the terminology, but those who don't even know that Windows is an operating system (or for that matter what an operating system is) may be left out in the cold. Then again, those who don't know what a web server is probably will not be drawn to the book (and are highly unlikely to read this critique on-line). There is also an underlying implication that Linux is only server-sided. This could inadvertently undermine today's open source movement - the next move for Linux must be to break into the small office/home desktop as successfully as it has into the web server world, as soon as more people discover there is 'no-cost' life beyond the Windows desktop. Finally, despite praising the Open Source movement, Rebel Code doesn't fall into the trap of simply becoming a 'Microsoft is evil' rant. Instead it remains balanced which means anyone interested in the state of the computer world (now and for the next few years, at least) could find something of interest here.
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