Open Source: The Unauthorized White Papers

Rating:
Summary: An Insider Home Run
Review: Sometimes a home run is little more than a hit causing an increment tick to a stat, but once in a while it's a powerful work of art that changes the game--Donald Rosenberg's book is the latter. It is, by far, the best book on Open Source written to date.

As someone involved with open source strategies at a large corporation in the computer industry, I found Donald's book to be objective, insightful, and current which reflects an intimate knowledge of someone on the inside.

The level-headedness of this book makes it an essential read for anyone trying to understand the counter-intuitive nature of open source or protect themselves from the FUD, emotions, and convoluted conversations that plague Open Source.

Rating:
Summary: A good starting point on Open Source.
Review: This book is a compilation of essays on open source from the author. He covers the origins and history, as well as a responsible coverage of the licensing models. While there is an over emphasis of Linux, it does talk about various business models that can be used in the open source context. It also includes the text of some of the major open source licenses.

Rating:
Summary: Open Source - The Unauthorized White Papers
Review: This was an excellent book; well researched, well written, and well organized. This book provided a remarkable contrast to "The Cathedral and the Baazar", which, while interesting, was generally poor in its organization and far too biased to take seriously. Although the author is obviously biased towards open sourse, this is the most objective book I've read coming from the open source community. Rosenberg often objectively points out the challenges the open source debate will face legally and philisophically in the near future. This is a great reference book for anyone interested in the open source debate.