I recently had a chance to read the book Rebel code by Glyn Moody published in 2001 and somewhat dated. The book must be made required reading for children in school (atleast from the 8th/9th class onwards)if India is ever to become a software superpower because of the following reasons--

It gives a complete overview of the history of the open source movement and one gets a good understanding from such history. It shows the values of the hacker movement--meritocracy, peer acknowledgement, pride in one's work etc etc plus also how work becomes worship/happiness and money comes naturally as a side effect. How sharing and giving reduce costs and ultimately increase the buying power of the whole world.

What are the pitfalls that are to be watched for in leadership, getting group consensus, keeping the community whole and so on. How things could be easily subverted? and so on. How the commercialisation helped/did not help the movement?

etc etc

In short this book is a real motivator as it gives insights and shows things from various perspectives. Its not talked about later technologies such as php, mysql, open source CRM/ERP business solutions etc etc but it is certainly better than reading all those confusing computer magazines which do not tell about trends and tend to give information overload to people like me.

I wish we had access to such books in 2001 itself. It would have helped a lot. In the end open source (volunteer driven part) has succeeded in some ways though core development now is being done by people paid by the establishment. But these top people have been given the freedom to innovate and do what they like once they have proved themselves.

Also this movement was a backlash against vendor lock in, not listening to the customer, fleecing the customer etc etc because of the unequal balance of power etc between vendor and customer. Most of the factors which led to the free software movement have since reduced/vanished but eternal vigil is needed . Microsoft and others can bring back the clock anytime -- I think there is a parallel between the Kerberos episode and open document standards being adopted/twisted by Microsoft (decommodifying or non transparency in standards is mentioned). Its not only Microsoft which is bad but also Oracle, HP, Canon, IBM etc--they do what suits them most and leads to vendor lock in.

Kush