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| Book Review of Karl Fogel's "Producing Open Source Software" |
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Thursday, January 05 2006 @ 01:08 AM EST
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Steve McInerney has read another book he feels enthusiastic enough about to want to share with you. It's "Producing Open Source Software," by Karl Fogel. By the way, if you're a Groklaw member and you find a book you think others would enjoy knowing about, feel free to contact me about doing a review. We have a nice system for making sure we know about articles and papers with News Picks, but it's nice to know about books that might be of interest to everyone.
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Karl Fogel's “Producing Open Source Software”
~ reviewed by Steve McInerney
Producing Open Source Software
How to Run a Successful Free Software Project
By Karl Fogel
First Edition October 2005 ISBN: 0-596-00759-0
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/producingoss/
I chose to purchase this book as a bit of a wild card in my most recent technical-book-buying splurge. Additionally, as someone with three active GPL'd projects and bits 'n' pieces in others, I figured it might have something useful to say. Something useful it certainly does!
The subtitle pretty much sums up the target of the book, which is to provide advice, and lots of it, on the running of, and participating in, Open Source Projects.
One could expect that the book would focus on technical issues: Choose one of these mail list servers, this tracking system, that Version Control system and so on. And these are areas that are briefly touched upon, but they are not the core of the book. These technical areas only take up only a single chapter: Chapter 3, Technical Infrastructure.
The majority of the book is about dealing with people. One could even call it a guide to Open Source Net-etiquette. What helps draw and retain the reader into such a potentially tedious topic is the highly judicious use of pointed examples that Karl intersperses throughout.
This is where the book shines strongest in my humble opinion.
These are real world examples that have really happened and demonstrate how someone solved a particularly difficult problem. That sort of experience and illumination is pure gold!
Groklaw regulars may feel some familiarity in the situation described in this quote from Chapter 6:
“The really difficult cases are people who are not overtly rude, but who manipulate or abuse the project's processes in a way that ends up costing other people time and energy, yet do not bring any benefit to the project. Such people often look for wedge points in the project's procedures, to give themselves more influence than they might otherwise have. This is much more insidious than mere rudeness, because neither the behavior nor the damage it causes is apparent to casual observers.”
The other major positive about this book is that, despite the title and subtitle, there is a lot in this book that is of huge benefit to anyone participating in any form in an Open Source project, not just running one. It was only with the benefit of reflecting back on the book while writing this review that I additionally realised just what a great introduction and explanation to and of Open Source culture and community it contained.
Unfortunately I did feel that the book somewhat missed one goal.
The book is mainly geared towards the larger projects, the Subversion's, the KDE's, the Geeklog's and so on. It's not really aimed, directly, at the smaller one-person-shop projects like two of my three projects. This lack was my second biggest disappointment. I was left with the impression that the book was aimed more at companies which are considering Open Sourcing a product of theirs than J. Random Hacker scratching that software writing itch.
This quote from early in Chapter 2:
“Free software distribution is a twofold task. The software needs to acquire users, and to acquire developers.”
That is a sample of this probably unintended bias. It assumes motivation(s) that align with one or both of those goals.
Incidentally and aside, the biggest disappointment I suffered was the lack of a nice animal pencil sketch on the front cover. The much loved traditional O'Reilly book cover. Shame O'Reilly. Shame on you. ;-)
I've mentioned one type of people problem a project might experience. There are plenty of others, even when applied to a less traditional Open Source project like Groklaw. It was fascinating seeing how much of Karl's advice we/Groklaw already do anyway, subconsciously or not. I'll save the more detailed observations for private emails with Pamela though. :-)
“Producing Open Source Software” is available online at http://www.producingoss.com/ under a Creative Commons license. But rather than download and read the book that way, I'd strongly suggest buying a copy instead. At around 1 cm thick, it fits nicely into that awkward gap on your bookshelf left by all those one inch thick monster references we all seem to have and need so many of.
Karl has written a superb book and I doubt my communication skills to gush effusively enough about it. Read it!
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| Authored by: LocoYokel on Thursday, January 05 2006 @ 02:00 AM EST |
Please follow the posting guidelines for content and clicky links.
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Waiting for the games I play to be released in Linux, or a decent Windows
emulator, to switch entirely.[ Reply to This | # ]
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- Enderle likes his windows broken. - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, January 05 2006 @ 02:40 AM EST
- Pemoline pulled from market, thanks again Ralph Nader. - Authored by: Tweeker on Thursday, January 05 2006 @ 04:03 AM EST
- McAfee and Applix agree SEC settlement terms - Authored by: cmc on Thursday, January 05 2006 @ 04:35 AM EST
- Gates sees IBM not Google as top Microsoft rival - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, January 05 2006 @ 06:25 AM EST
- Microsoft Feedback Page for Windows Vista - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, January 05 2006 @ 06:44 AM EST
- Danger. Danger Will Robinson!!! - Authored by: Waterman on Thursday, January 05 2006 @ 09:13 AM EST
- Gates promises Windows everywhere - Authored by: KAKMAN on Thursday, January 05 2006 @ 11:48 AM EST
- SCO vs Novell - Amended Complaint [and the whole TSG House of Cards] Defeated by IBM??? - Authored by: sproggit on Thursday, January 05 2006 @ 12:58 PM EST
- Pedigree problem - Authored by: joef on Thursday, January 05 2006 @ 01:29 PM EST
- SEC anyone? - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, January 05 2006 @ 03:10 PM EST
- Small correction - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, January 05 2006 @ 03:11 PM EST
- Following your logic... - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, January 05 2006 @ 04:32 PM EST
- nit-picks ... - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, January 05 2006 @ 06:18 PM EST
- nit-picks ... - Authored by: sproggit on Friday, January 06 2006 @ 04:28 AM EST
- nit-picks ... - Authored by: Wol on Friday, January 06 2006 @ 05:46 AM EST
- so if ... - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, January 06 2006 @ 07:02 AM EST
- Huh? - Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, January 06 2006 @ 03:49 PM EST
- OT: Attempt to rule software not copyrightable - Authored by: PSaltyDS on Thursday, January 05 2006 @ 02:37 PM EST
- PJ or Mathfox: Need to update copyright notice - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, January 05 2006 @ 02:54 PM EST
- "Lampposts wired for Wi-Fi" - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, January 05 2006 @ 03:15 PM EST
- So much for Microsoft compatibility - Authored by: lifewish on Thursday, January 05 2006 @ 03:21 PM EST
- FORBES GETS IT RIGHT at CES but not with Dan Lyons. - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, January 05 2006 @ 03:31 PM EST
- EFF Calls on EMI to Permit Security Research on Copy-Protected CDs - Authored by: SpaceLifeForm on Thursday, January 05 2006 @ 03:38 PM EST
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| Authored by: ankylosaurus on Thursday, January 05 2006 @ 03:06 AM EST |
If necessary...
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The Dinosaur with a Club at the End of its Tail[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, January 05 2006 @ 05:58 AM EST |
| I just wanted to thank Steve for this book review. I found it very useful as it
pointed me to a good resource I didn't know about.
I'm involved in two
projects where this book would be relevant (OpenOffice.org and OpenDocument Fellowship). It also
sounds interesting. Currently I use the "One Minute Manager" combined with "The
Cathedral and the Bazaar". I'm eager to read another resource about managing
human resources on a FOSS-style project.
Cheers,
Daniel. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: nijhof on Thursday, January 05 2006 @ 08:40 AM EST |
| The book itself is open source, obviously -- see http://producingoss.com/
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: cwbinko on Thursday, January 05 2006 @ 12:12 PM EST |
| The book is also available on Safari for those who prefer your books online: http://safari.oreilly.com/0596007590
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, January 05 2006 @ 12:28 PM EST |
While I would find the discussion of the OSS development process interesting,
I'm guessing that this book would be helpful for anyone involved in developing
in-house software as well as for OSS projects. That quote from Chapter 6 has got
me looking for a copy of this book at my local bookstore. (Not that we have too
many of those sort of people disrupting our development projects. No, no... that
wouldn't be the reason at all. ;-) ) [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, January 05 2006 @ 03:30 PM EST |
http://www.qctimes.net/articles/2006/01/04/news/local/doc43bb692ac9e86281138542.
txt#top [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: sittingduck on Thursday, January 05 2006 @ 03:33 PM EST |
| I think that replacing the arrows with cats on the front
cover would have
given the right impression. If not cats,
then a combination of cats and
lemmings. (And how is it
that those arrows are all pointing in the
same
direction??) ---
Quack. Quack Quack. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, January 05 2006 @ 03:52 PM EST |
that you can have not but one skill and still manage to get things done. that
skill is ability to communicate and get others to follow or help you in whatever
endevour you are doing, it is also interesting to note, that studies of net
ettiqutte are often by the time they come out outdated to a small part but i
like hti sguys approach and i can honestly say that if one guy in a project that
sleading has great people skills as you call them that project will excel in
many ways, htink of the title webmaster as it should be.
He must know all the fields in the IT world enough so to run several differant
depts yet be ALSO able to communicate what the bossman wants into techno speak
to the people he looks after, (yah i callit look after while many of you would
say "run" or "whom work for him". if the employer in this
case htinks of employees as his kids in a sense he will go a lot more and get a
lot more form them by simply understanding they arent robots.[ Reply to This | # ]
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