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Embracing Insanity
from the history-of-OS-development dept.
| Embracing Insanity: Open Source Software Development | |
| author | Russell C. Pavlicek |
| pages | 177 |
| publisher | Sams Publishing |
| rating | 7/10 |
| reviewer | Jon Katz |
| ISBN | 0-672-31989-6 |
| summary | this books explains (to non-techs, esp) why Open Source is important. |
There's a continuing avalache of technical/OS and other books and manuals, but very few that remind us why we should care about this stuff and, better yet, give us the tools, arguments and data to convince others.
"Embracing Insanity," by Russell C. Pavlicek (Linux Evangelist for Compaq's Professional Services organization, and 20-year computer industry veteran) is funny, smart and warm-hearted, something one could hardly expect from a book on the origins, meaning and history of the open source movement. Even though it's written by an OS veteran, it seems to be written mostly for the non-technical who need to come to terms with a movement that is both evolutionary and revolutionary.
Many of the people reading this will know some or all of the material in '"Embracing Insanity: Open Source Software Development."
This is a book to give your parents if they are wondering what you're doing up in your room all night, your teachers if they haven no clue as to why software has political, social and cultural implications, and perhaps as important, your boss, as he or she wonders why they need to understand open source and free software if they really want to do business in the 21st century.
It's not great literature, and doesn't purport to be. It is written with great heart, clarity and authority. "Embracing Insanity" is a history, a primer and a social biography. It explains what to do regarding OS, and what not to do, the sometimes bizarre nature and traditions of the OS culture.This is not a book that will confuse or scare off non-techies with language that isn't explained, or technical information taken for granted. Quite the contrary. It brings OS to life in a way that is completely accessible, explaining it's significance as a business and social model for many kinds of institutions, and its profoundly non-technological promise.
Pavlicek traces the growth of the OS and the free software movement, but he catches the weird (insane, perhaps) history and spirit of this particularly geek-driven phenomena. He sees OS as the liberation of the geek culture, for which he obviously has great feeling and empathy. One of his very neat ideas is that OS software development is "Essential Disruptive Technology," one of a hand of particular technologies that come out of nowhere to alter the direction of technical progress, change the rules, and catch all of the regular players off guard.
"...it is not so much that Open Source ventures onto technical ground that has never been explored before. But it does bring the rules and expectations from one area of technology (large computer systems) into another area (PC systems). And, most importantly, it does so in a way that defies the norms of the computer industry..." OS, he writes, is a new way of thinking about technology and computing, especially desktop computing.
"Embracing Insanity" is an proselytizing book (with a foreword by our own Robin "roblimo" Miller, Editor-In-Chief for the Open Source Development Network (formerly Andover.net). It's clear that Pavlickek has been trying to explain to people for years why anybody should care about OS, so he's written this book to make sure the argument continues and widens. "Embracing Insanity" is the view of a true believer about a movement that is widely misunderstood, and whose commercial and social significance is still lost on much of the non-geek world.
Pavlicek claims that OS explodes the myth of the anti-social geek. In a world where dread stereotypes of geeks pop up on the evening news nightly, nothing, he says, could be farther from the truth. Geeks are quite social, they just have a different set of priorities. The OS community, he says, uses a number of ways to sociall connect with each other, from basic Net tools like email and IRC, mailing lists and weblogs to the rapidly-proliferating OS news and discussion sites (like Linux Today). In the Linux community, bands of people come together all the time to talk about OS software and, in some cases, the free software movement.
Pavlicek covers some well-known OS history, but he also breaks some original ground, including when he talks about the moral values of OS beyond technology and software. One of the key values of OS and its community, he argues, is truth. "In a world where people are constantly exchanging ideas, evaluating concepts, and suggesting enhancements, it is vitally important that everyone speak the truth as he sees it. If someone fails to speak the truth, the process of creating software will be greatly impaired." The impact of anything less in the OS environment is devastating to the process of creating software. "If someone in charge of a piece of code willingly lies about how the code functions to other developers seeking to use that code, that person has caused great harm. Someone who lies to a development team could cost that team hundreds of even thousands of wasted hours of development. In that case, the liar has caused numerous individuals to waste precious hours of time chasing down a dead-end road."
There aren't too many media, social or political movements so dependent on truth or vulnerable to posturing, inaccuracies, hype and blatant falsehoods. Pavlicek explains why out this sometimes ill-tempered meticulousness is deeply rooted in geek culture, where mistakes have consequences, and where patience for fools and dissemblers is short. That could hardly be said of politics or media.
"Embracing Insanity" is an argument for OS, but Pavlicek bluntly spells out the business realities -- pro and con -- that underlie open source development. Is it good or bad for the bottom line, good or bad for the consumer, practical or not for everybody else? In addition to writing a primer of OS terms and names, he also dispels some myth and confusion. Lots of people don't know that Open Source isn't freeware, or that OS software isn't the same thing as public-domain software.
There aren't a lot of books coming out of the Open Source movement that you can hand to anyone with an interest in the future of technology -- that would cover a lot of people -- that so confidently captures the spirit, history and potential of one of the most interesting social and technological ideas in the world. OS may have started as a programming movement, but it has mushroomed well beyond that. Pavlicek grasps this big idea, even as many of his more technically-minded colleagues still resist it.
Geeks have had a hard time explaining the significance of OS to the world beyond. Now they don't have to. "Embracing Insanity" delivers on its promise to explain why society should care about this communal movement that seemed to come out of nowhere in response to the looming Microsoftization of the planet. It's almost a cliche in publishing to say a book is long overdue, but that's the perfect description here.
"Embracing Insanity" is the right gift for the people who have no idea what you're doing with your life, but may, for lots of important reasons, need or want to know.
Purchase this book at ThinkGeek.
non-geek world (Score:3)
Gee, if he went for a target audience even a little more specific than that, he wouldn't sell enough copies to justify writing the book.
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No... (Score:5)
Are you kidding? I was doing what any normal, healthy, pubescent boy was doing... and praying like hell that my mother didn't walk in, and that Vivian Hsu [netidols.com] would!!
but where's the accountability? (Score:3)
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Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
You are wrong on eighty counts - here are five (Score:5)
Here are just a few reasons why OSS will thrive, even if the supposed end of the gold rush comes (out of curiosity, what do you think will make that happen within ten years?):
1) People have generally the same amount of free time regardless of how much they make. When I was making 40k per year years ago, I had the same amount of free time as I do now - in fact I have slightly less because I fee some obligation to produce a lot for how much I get paid. The only difference is how many things you can buy and how you can spend your free time... indeed, if I was making a lot less I would probably travel less, leaving more time to work on OS projects.
2) There's a lot of interest in OS at the college level. These people already are not making any money, they just do it for fun. Why would that change?
3) If there was a crash, there would be a lot of people who had saved up enough to retire - a number of them might go on to work on OS projects in thier spare time.
4) If you look really far ahead at when current programmers finally retire at about 80 or 90 years old, why wouldn't they take up OSS projects as a side hobby? If you look ahead at what happens at people in OSS now grow older, with new people behind them, is it not really likley that the OSS movement will grow tremendously in the next few hundred years?
5) Trolls are always wrong about future events, being short sighted and ignorant.
Correcting the failure of software copyright (Score:5)
Not public domain in the sense of "expired copyright", but public domain in the sense that copyright is supposed to place examples of the art into the public for study and learning. Copyright is supposed to promote disclosure. Publication of object code is not disclosure. It is non-disclosure. Software copyright is a failure in that it grants a monopoly on object code without the required disclosure of the corresponding source code.
Over 99% of the people who purchase a novel will do nothing more with it then use it for entertainment purposes. However, the remaining tiny percent of the purchasers are the next generation's authors. They will read the novel, and from it, learn the art of writing new novels.
Software doesn't work that way. No amount of study of Windows 98 will teach you how to write an operating system. That's because Windows 98 doesn't come with source code. You can use it, but you aren't allowed to understand it. This is no accident. It is the express desire of Microsoft that, in spite of their receiving the benefits of a copyright monopoly, that no one be allowed to read (the technical term for reading object code is "reverse engineering") their copyrighted work. Says so right in their license. Says so, with very few exceptions, in every single license of every single piece of proprietary software on the market.
Imagine if a young student expressed interest in becoming an author, and was told: Ok, but you will have to learn how to write from scratch. There are no examples for you to learn from. You cannot read pre-existing novels. You will have to learn plot development, character development, plot twists, all from scratch -- from textbooks. You must make absolutely sure that you never, ever read someone else's novel, because that would "contaminate" you, and you could never legally write a novel, because you could be sued by the people whose novels you had read.
I don't think that the result would be a "progress" in the art of writing novels. Why should we think that by making every potential software developer "start from scratch" leads to better software?
Now substitute "software" for "novels", and "reverse engineer" for "read", and you will get a statement that most legal departments of software companies would quickly agree with.
No wonder Free software and Open Source software are considered akin to a revolution. For the first time in the history of software the doors are thrown open. People are finally allowed, and encouraged to understand software instead of just use it. The fact that over 99% of the people who use Free and Open Source software will never modify it is irrelevant. What is important is that the tiny fraction of young people who are curious and want to learn how software works so that they can write their own, finally have the opportunity to examine and play with full fledged, working, professional quality software. And in the case of Free software, they have the right to reuse and redistribute their own work -- the modified code.
Free and Open Source software are revolutionary because they transcend the political limits of copyright law, and create what copyright law should have created, but failed to. A way "To promote the progress of science and useful arts."
Enjoy the Irony (Score:3)
"Russell Pavlicek, Linux and Open Source evangelist, has written an impassioned little book that purports to explain to the non-geek world in particular why they should care about the Open Source movement and the success of OS systems like Linux and FreeBSD. "
From ThinkGeek store:
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I enjoy the irony that a book explaining and extolling the virtues of Open Source and free software must be purchased.
So, is there an open source version of this book, available for free download?
Perhaps there's an online version where people can edit and contribute new chapters, for the greater good -- many eyes creates better writing, no?
:)
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D. Fischer
List Price (Score:3)
Re:Correcting the failure of software copyright (Score:3)
However, IBM stabbed its users in the back when it went Object Code Only on VM. Even though they eventually reversed themselves, and started re-releasing the source code (or at least the output of the PL/X compilation), a lot of damage had been done. There was a turning point when a lot of people realized that having source code available at the whim of a corporation was simply not acceptable. I promote Linux at my workplace because I don't ever want that to happen again. We lost a lot. We had to withdraw popular features from our system because we simply couldn't support them anymore without access to the source code. The axe fell earlier this year, and just a few months ago, a salvage team came in, cut up our three-processor 3090 and had it hauled away for scrap. It's a shame, because VM has some great features that never made it to unix -- CMS pipelines for one.
The difference here is that groups like SHARE were only for IBM customers. You had physical access to the source code, and IBM's implied consent to share your modifications with other IBM customers, but it was all under the control of IBM. The breakthrough of the GPL was in creating a structure where the source code cannot be "recalled" if the "strategic direction" of the company that licensed the source code changes along with the management.
So yes, there have always been small user communities clustered around licensed source code, but this is different because the community is the general public, and the license to use, modify, and redistribute the software is permanent.
Perhaps the Icons, but what about... (Score:4)
But what about learning how to design a a great colour correction algorithm? What about learning how Photoshop works efficently with files much bigger than availiable memory? In the case of IE, wouldn't it be nice to be able to see and learn from its rendering engine? Mozilla couldn't and had to build one from scratch.
Algorithmic and structural aspects to a program are one of the most important things to learn from, and knowing what other people have done can lead to someone else coming up with even better ideas in future products, or even in exisiting ones.
Re:Correcting the failure of software copyright (Score:3)
And that's another reason why software has become so unreliable: when every user had access to MAPICS or RMS source, we often fixed the bugs and sent the fixes back to the vendors for inclusion into the next release. Can't do that anymore, either: now all you can do is try to get someone's attention off the next marketing-mandated feature long enough to at least acknowledge that a bug exists. It's very frustrating for those of us used to providing software which actually works as expected.
Please understand that I'm not arguing against open source: I think the model is right even if I'm not entirely sure how masses of developers are going to be able to support themselves if everything went open. I was just pointing out that the concept isn't brand spanking shiny new; we have prior experience with at least one form of it before and it had some pretty compelling advantages even in ancient times.
mjs
Re:Correcting the failure of software copyright (Score:3)
Ah, yes, but are you forgetting that Apple took people to court over issues of "look and feel?" The overt "expression" of a program is now copyrightable (or at least litigatable). The Free Software Foundation was formed partly in response to Apple's inexcusable lawsuits.
Atari (back was it was owned by -- surprise, surprise -- Warner Communications) was a "pioneer" in this thinking; that the overt expression of software could be proprietary. Atari had purchased from Namco the home gaming rights to PacMan; rights which, prior to that point, never existed ("Hi, we're going to invent a new form of property out of thin air and then sue you for 'stealing' it"). Atari then went after boatloads of PacMan clones (nearly all of which were running on platforms Atari refused to support), the best known being the Apple-][ clone by HAL Labs.
Sierra OnLine did score a court victory when Atari lost its suit against them over JawBreaker, but Sierra later caved in to their demands when Atari threatened to clone Sierra's entire product line (an empty threat, IMHO; Atari's software offerings back then were mediocre, at best, with very rare, if conspicuous, exceptions).
So, I regret to say that, as the rulebook is currently written, the KDE and GIMP guys do in fact have something to fear. Yes, the public outcry would be massive if Micros~1 or Adobe tried to quash these projects but, given attention spans these days, the impact to their revenues -- the only thing that really matters to them -- would be negligible.
Schwab
(In a bitter mood.)
Re:Correcting the failure of software copyright (Score:4)
Good post, BTW.
The fact that over 99% of the people who use Free and Open Source software will never modify it is irrelevant. What is important is that the tiny fraction of young people who are curious and want to learn how software works so that they can write their own, finally have the opportunity to examine and play with full fledged, working, professional quality software. And in the case of Free software, they have the right to reuse and redistribute their own work -- the modified code.
I think it's important to emphasize that nobody knows ahead of time who that 1% will be. Sometimes the best code can come from the strangest little corners; from unexpected people.
When code is Open Source, we (as a society) get the greatest chance that somebody out there will get some insight from existing code, and come up with something else brilliant. Those flashes can potentially advance the state of the art.
Great in principle, unimpressive in practice (Score:5)
"If anyone had told me back then that getting back to embarrassingly primitive UNIX would be the great hope and investment obsession of the year 2000, merely because it's name was changed to Linux and its source code was opened up again, I never would have had the stomach or the heart to continue in computer science."
-- Jaron Lanier
Linus created Linux because he couldn't find a decent UNIX that he could get for his PC. It's not that he thought UNIX should be the future, or that UNIX is the ultimate operating system. Realize this. Somehow we've gotten ourselves all wrapped up in UNIX again, thinking that we're oh so cool, but we shouldn't have to be subjected to this nonsense. I think many technical gurus are similarly horrified that we've started a revolution that's given us exactly what we were trying to get away from (Jamie Zawinski and Rob Pike, for example). Stability, pre-emptive multitasking, memory protection, yes, they are all good things. But this doesn't equate to "Linux over Windows."
The bottom line is that it's a shame Linux and FreeBSD are the crown jewels of Open Source. Sigh.
There is a definite need..... (Score:3)
You don't need to tell me about the value of OS, but I am a small fish in a small sea...
Re:Great in principle, unimpressive in practice (Score:4)
So what would you suggest instead of Linux or FreeBSD?
Not so long ago, I would have suggested an updated version of the Amiga OS. I still think simplicity and modularity are the way to go, something Amiga had in spades, and Linux still lacks. However, even saying the word "Amiga" gets people groaning or giggling.
There's a lot to reocommend BeOS. It's quite modern and innovative, but I don't see the breadth of Open Source projects for it as I do for Linux.
I think the reason Linux "won" the Open Source mindshare wars is because, though it's kinda ugly when compared to Windoze^H^Hws, UNIX is powerful . Out of the box, UNIX lets you:
In short, UNIX lets you get started on whatever you want to do faster than anything else. It's a rapid prototyping environment at all levels. This is why I think it's such a success, since it rewards experimentation so quickly and consistently.
So, if you want something other than UNIX to "win" mindshare, it must enable rewarding hacking right away, so that people will want to hack on it more.
IMHO, of course...
Schwab