The Cathedral & The Bazaar

[bonzodog]

I know some of you might have read this, but it's a worthwhile read to those of you new to FLOSS, and who are wondering how FLOSS development works, why projects aren't forked immediately, and how you can make money from selling OSS programs, without worrying if they will be forked.

I also know some people think that ESR (Eric S Raymond for the uninitiated) is somewhat of an idiot, but these two essays by him are worth a read:

The Cathedral & The Bazaar (http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue3_3/raymond/)

Homesteading The Noosphere (http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue3_10/raymond/index.html)

I am actually reading the printed book of his collected essays plus a couple of updates to the first one. Please bear in mind that the first one was written in 1997.

[23meg]

People inclined to write code and specs, work on bugs, etc. should also look at The Art Of UNIX Programming (http://www.faqs.org/docs/artu/), even though it's not a technical programming book in the usual sense, and people of varying interests will find interesting stuff in it too.

[Engnome]

The Cathedral & the Bazaar and The Art Of UNIX Programming are really good reads, havent read the other one though. Thanks for the tip : )

[idn]

If anyone is interested here is one of my final year university papers (http://idnzor.net/tmp/Comparison%20of%20Open%20Source%20and%20Proprietar y%20Software%20in%20the%20Context%20of%20Security. pdf) talking about security in open source and propietary software. For my MSc in HCI i think I am going to look at communicaiton models in open source software, or maybe look at trust in communication. Anyway, thats a few months off :)

http://idnzor.net/tmp/Comparison%20of%20Open%20Source%20and%20Proprietar y%20Software%20in%20the%20Context%20of%20Security. pdf

Enoy!

[Seisen]

I read those years ago before I even started using Linux at all, I think I am going to check them out again.