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mattj256's review
3.0
I've seen this book cited a lot, so I figured I should read it. It is very interesting, though a bit longer and less coherent than I would like. The book is a collection of five separate but related essays about open source. I don't think the book has been updated in 20 years - there are numerous dead links including the author's website. And there are no case studies in this century. Considering the importance of this book to the history of open source, I'm surprised no one has taken it upon themselves to publish a second edition.
Sprinkled through the book are "rules" which represent the author's formalized knowledge of how software engineering culture works. 70% of the value of this book for me was in those rules, which amount to less than two pages of text. There are also some interesting anthropological musings here, if you're interested in that sort of thing. I found it especially interesting that he deduced rules of hacker motivation that people had been following but no one had written down before.
Check it out if you're interested in learning more about 20th century hacker culture. Just don't expect the links to work.
Sprinkled through the book are "rules" which represent the author's formalized knowledge of how software engineering culture works. 70% of the value of this book for me was in those rules, which amount to less than two pages of text. There are also some interesting anthropological musings here, if you're interested in that sort of thing. I found it especially interesting that he deduced rules of hacker motivation that people had been following but no one had written down before.
Check it out if you're interested in learning more about 20th century hacker culture. Just don't expect the links to work.
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