Open Sources 2.0: The Continuing Evolution

by Chris DiBona, Mark Stone, Danese Cooper

Open Sources 2.0 is a collection of insightful and thought-provoking essays from today's technology leaders that continues painting the evolutionary picture that developed in the 1999 book Open Voices from the Revolution . These essays explore open source's impact on the software industry and reveal how open source concepts are infiltrating other areas of commerce and society. The essays appeal to a broad the software developer will find thoughtful reflections on practices and methodology from leading open source developers like Jeremy Allison and Ben Laurie, while the business executive will find analyses of business strategies from the likes of Sleepycat co-founder and CEO Michael Olson and Open Source Business Conference founder Matt Asay. From China, Europe, India, and Brazil we get essays that describe the developing world's efforts to join the technology forefront and use open source to take control of its high tech destiny. For anyone with a strong interest in technology trends, these essays are a must-read. The enduring significance of open source goes well beyond high technology, however. At the heart of the new paradigm is network-enabled distributed the growing impact of this model on all forms of online collaboration is fundamentally challenging our modern notion of community. What does the future hold? Veteran open source commentators Tim O'Reilly and Doc Searls offer their perspectives, as do leading open source scholars Steven Weber and Sonali Shah. Andrew Hessel traces the migration of open source ideas from computer technology to biotechnology, and Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger and Slashdot co-founder Jeff Bates provide frontline views of functioning, flourishing online collaborative communities. The power of collaboration, enabled by the internet and open source software, is changing the world in ways we can only begin to imagine. Open Sources 2.0 further develops the evolutionary picture that emerged in the original Open Sources and expounds on the transformative open source philosophy. "This is a wonderful collection of thoughts and examples by great minds from the free software movement, and is a must have for anyone who follows free software development and project histories." --Robin Monks, Free Software Magazine The list of contributors include

Genres: Nonfiction, Technology, Computer Science, Software

488 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Erika RS]

This is a book of essays on open source development. The first Open Sources was published in 1999, and most of the essays covered what open source is. This book examines what has happened in the open source community since that time. The essays are about many aspects of open source development, but the book can largely be divided into two sections. The first sections covers the business perspective. The essays in this section discuss the use of open source software in business, businesses based around open source software, and some of the pragmatics of open source development. The second section covers the cultural perspective on open source. It includes essays about how ideas from open source development have influenced other fields such as biology and knowledge sharing. Overall, the essays were insightful and interesting; some were particularly good, and others bored me nearly to tears. The book is worth reading if you are interested in open source. (Be warned though, the proof readers did not do the best job with this book.)

[Yu Zhou · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a wide collection of writings from top Open Source insiders. The writings provide insights into the history, evolution, dynamics, implications and future of Open Source developments. This book is not technical, so it gives high-level views of Open Source's impact on software development and software business. The writings are easy to follow, although the writings sometimes are like speaking as they are directly from speeches. The book has dated a little bit, given how much the internet and software have changed since its publication. This book desires attentions, because Linux and Internet influence everybody.

[Samuel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is absolutely eye-opening into the world of open source software. Being a collection of essays written by various authors, it gives a wide variety of perspectives into a wide variety of aspects.