book reviews

[Peter Evans <peter@example.com>]

I'm the mailing list subscriber who's least qualified to write
Linux-related book reviews, but it's a slow day on the list and I
welcome any excuse not to do the work I ought to be doing instead, so:

Glyn Moody, *Rebel code: Linux and the open source revolution* RRP
$27.50, http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0738203335/

A pretty good history. It's well organized and doesn't have omissions
that are obvious even to me (which isn't saying much). One oddity/irritation
is that there's too much direct speech, and there's a surprising density
of "gee" in it: "And I thought, gee, what if. . . ." Did all those
people say "gee" in the interviews and nobody said (for example) "shit"?
Or was "shit" euphemized to "gee"? It does seem to go on a bit, though,
and at least five pages could have been shaved off this book to good
effect.

Peter Wayner, *Free for all: How Linux and the free software movement
undercut the high-tech titans* RRP $26
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0066620503/

Bits in here are pretty good, but reading the whole thing -- and I did!
-- is a pretty ghastly experience. It's horribly repetitive. The man
claims to be a writer for NYT and Salon, which if true goes to show the
value of copyeditors and their woeful underemployment by Harper. (No,
come to think of it the acquisitions people should have just turned this
one down.) There's an interminable number of miniature chapters, but
their division sometimes seems pretty arbitrary. ("This has gone on for
four pages already; let's chop it into two.") The man obsessively uses
"folks" in a way that I thought was limited to evangelists and the
tackiest kind of used-car salesman. Lots of mumbo-jumbo about "the
Source" (so capitalized); Wayner thinks that many hackers view it not
just in practical or political but also quasi-mystical terms, but he
seldom if ever backs this up and it looks as if it was his brain that
was rotted by *Star Wars*. And it ends with cliches about how
"information wants to be free". Gruesome.

Robert Young and Wendy Rohm, *Under the radar: How Red Hat changed the
software business and took Microsoft by surprise* RRP $27.50 http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1576105067/

I have to admit it, I didn't read this one. I flicked through it, though,
and much of it looked like a larger print, larger margin, abridged
version of the kind of thing that Moody handles in the first book above.
I noticed a few pages about Jamie Zawinsky [sic], and stuck the book back
on the shelf.

None of these books exists in paperback. I shouldn't really judge the
third one as I haven't read it, but I don't think it's worth looking out
for. Neither is the second. The first is perhaps worth the $19.25 that
Amazon wants for it. (If you want it from Amazon, hurry before Amazon
goes bust.)

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Peter Evans peter@example.com