Rebel Code: Linux and the Open Source Revolution |
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Glyn Moody
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Pages: 344 (Paperback)
ISBN: 0738206709
Pub: Perseus Books, US
Pub date: 2002-06-20
Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 508758
Editorial Review:
Everyone in computing has heard of Linux and hundreds of millions use it every day. Every Net user accesses Linux systems dozens of times during any Net session. Yet because people associate products with companies, Linux--with its thousands of largely anonymous volunteer developers and free availability--is a difficult fit with our world view.
The Rebel Code puts Linux into an historical and social context. Based largely on interviews with the main players and precise historical data (Linux kernel releases are dated to the second) it traces Free Software from its early eighties origin with Robert Stallman's founding of the Gnu Project and takes it as far as the end of 2000 with Gnu/Linux becoming a worldwide phenomenon running handheld PDAs, PCs and Macs, IBM mainframes and powering the world's biggest supercomputers.
Glyn Moody charts every milestone in the development of the Linux kernel from Linus Torvalds' first installation of Minix. As important, he follows the progress of major Free Software projects--essential to the success of Gnu/Linux--from Emacs and GCC to Sendmail and XFree86 finishing with KDE and Gnome.
The end result is a curiously exciting and compulsively readable tale which stands comparison with Tracy Kidder's book, The Soul of a New Machine. Endlessly fascinating, you'll be up reading it well past bedtime. --Steve Patient
Reader Reviews:
Very informative and thought provoking (0/0 people found this helpful)
I really enjoyed this book, and recommend it to anyone interested in what got us here today.
a good journalistic account (2/2 people found this helpful)
I enjoyed this book and learnt quite a few things from it, despite being fairly familiar with most of the story already. In the large part it's well written and easy to read. However I second the reviewer above who complains about the lack of references. Even though Moody does say in the preface that much of his material comes from interviews, there is plenty that clearly does not and should have been referenced. This omission stops it from being truly useful as a history.
Also, another minor criticism, which applies to most books of this genre (journalistic accounts of computer history), is the book's relentless focus on the individuals involved, with little or no assessment of technical or other factors. Thus each episode involves yet another student hacker performing heroic coding feats, one blends into the next and the thing gets a little tedious. Perhaps Moody felt himself or his readers unequipped to deal with the technical issues, but the inclusion of just a little more technical depth would have added texture, and made some chapters a lot more engaging.
Nevertheless I think this is a good book, one of the best of its type, and deserves four stars.
Interesting but skewed view of the free software movment (11/13 people found this helpful)
I found this book as interesting for it's sense of being written at the hight of the dot-com boom, when it seemed Linux would truly change everything as I did it's intended content. There is a lot in here about the history and philosophy the Free Software foundation (FSF) which really put the whole 'Linux' thing into perspective i.e. 'Linux' is just the kernel, the thing that really makes 'Linux' exciting is the GNU philosophy (read the book to find out more).
Although I enjoyed the book, the journalism is pretty one-sided and almost totally un-critical of the open-source philosophy. For instance, it does not touch on the fact that, for all the clever-clever hackers out in GNU land - most of the critical software is simply a re-hash of software devised by 'traditional monolithic corporations'
UNIX, NFS, TCP/IP anyone? Still it's a good read, but take what it says with a pinch of salt.
Excellent!!! (4/5 people found this helpful)
Rebel Code is an excellent introduction to the world and history of open source software developent. Read in conjunction with Linus Torvalds new book "Just For Fun" and you will have an excellent couple of nights reading material.
Highly recommended (0/1 people found this helpful)
An excellent and fascinating book that describes the Linux (and open source) revolution from the beginning. An excellent guide to those that don't properly "get" open source.
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Categories
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Books -> Subjects -> Business, Finance & Law -> General
Books -> Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> General
Books -> Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> UNIX & Linux
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Books -> Refinements -> Language (feature_browse-bin) -> English
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