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Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution
Edited by Chris DiBona, Sam Ockman and Mark Stone
O'Reilly Publishing (01252 711776) pounds 16.50 (paperback)
MOST of O'Reilly's guides are known by the animal or insect featured on their cover, and while this one has been left tastefully blank, it could well be called `the guru book'. It's a collection of 14 essays by the leading lights of the `open source' and `free software' movements, including Richard Stallman (GNU Emacs word processor and the Free Software Foundation), Linus Torvalds (Linux operating system), Larry Wall (Perl programming language), Brian Behlendorf (Apache Web server), Eric Raymond (Open Source Initiative), Kirk McKusick (Berkeley Unix) and Bob Young (Red Hat version of GNU/Linux). Tim O'Reilly, as the leading publisher in the `open source' movement, has also contributed to his own book.
And it's a classic. It captures a movement that's growing fast enough to be important, but still small enough for...