Heya all,

I am writing a paper for school about the Open Source Software movement and I figured I'd start looking into where I will get my specific information from. I have found a few websites so far, but I'm not sure where to look for books on the subject.

I am writing a research paper in which I need to describe the beginning of Open Source Software, then go on to tell has it has impacted the world so far and how it is still impacting the world. I have a basic idea what I will be writing based on what I've read online and what I have learned over the past few years on my own. It is always good to have books to back it up though.

Has anyone read or heard of any books on the subject? I would greatly appreciate any recommendations.

Thanks,
Chryzmo

I have read:
The Cathedral & the Bazaar by Eric S. Raymond
***** A very interesting commentary about how and why the open source model works so well.

Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software by Sam Williams
**** This book gives interesting insights into Richard Stallman the man and his role as a driving force of the Free Software movement.

Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary by Linus Torvalds and David Diamond
***** At the beginning of this book, you read how Linus Torvalds only agreed to do this book if t would be fun, fin to write and fun to read. Well he did agree and the book is great fun and very interesting.

and Free for All: How LINUX and the Free Software Movement Undercut the High-Tech Titans by Peter Wayner
* I didn't like the tone of this book, Wayner seems to be very anti 'the man'. He repeats himself and I noticed a couple of places where he had got his facts wrong (or perhaps deliberately skewed them) e.g. he says that Linus Torvalds started working on Linux because he couldn't afford to buy minix. I have read in Torvalds' autobiography (above) and in other places that he did buy minix and he even based his kernel on it to some extent. If Wayner got such a well known fact wrong who knows what else he's got wrong.

I hope you find this helpful. Good luck with your project.

- Jessica

O'Reilly has a whole book of essays from various open source luminaries available on their Web site. It's called Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution.

Open Sources 2 was recently released.

There's this another by Eric S. Raymond, online:
"The Art of Unix Programming", non-technical:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/