Rating: 
Summary: nice title, shame about the plot
Review: so i was surprised by this book. i thought it would venture journalist opinion about non tech matters - in fact, it takes at pretty much face value the self-evaluation of the people, and ventures opinions on tech. matters that are inappropriate - a bit like the hero-worship in the New New thing; like a couple of other reviewers, i found the slightly disjointed "storyline" a bit tricky (and i like thomas pynchon:-); and i agree with one of the others comments that some sort of critical comment/assessment about timeing (dotcom-ism) might have been interesting...anyhow, it was still a very well researched and interesting read, and to date, the best thing about the linux phenomenon oh, HATE the cover :-(
Rating: 
Summary: Must read!
Review: The book gives a complete history of open source development starting from the earlier days of RMS and Linus. The strong point of the book is that the depth of coverage on open source history is unmatchable. My most favourite chapters are the ones that describe the early development of Linux and the history of Perl. Reading the book gives the impression that author's bias against the RMS-style free-software. Also the author gives enough hints of his dislike for Microsoft's style of proprietary software. And towards the end, as the author starts explaining linux' entry into the corporate place, the book tends to be a bit dragging. Overall, a must read for any open source enthusiast.
Rating:
Summary: A Biography of Open Source Projects
Review: This book is a biography of some of the best known Open Source projects. Each chapter introduces the key members of each project, how or why it was started, providing some very interesting and little known facts. Some of the projects discussed are Linux (obviously), Richard Stallman and FSF, Apache, Samba, KDE and GNOME, the various Linux distros and others. The author is a commendable job of explaining technical issues to people who may not be familiar with Linux or Open Source. The style of writing seems to flow pretty smoothly. I would say it's kind of like an overview of the history and concept of Open Source in general. I would recommend it to people who are interested in the history of Open Source and want to know what the hype is all about.
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