The power of open source software (OSS) is immense and pretty much unlimited. Open source does not stand for access to the source code only. It is something much bigger than this. It offers freedom to anyone skillful enough to modify and improve what has to be improved in the code. The core principles of the open source software include transparency, participation, collaboration, community, meritocracy, rapid prototyping and, last but not least, sharing. Yet, the most important aspect of OSS is the fact that it is beneficial not just to program developers but to non-programmers as well. In this regard, instead of presenting with the well-known, widely established conventional belief which proclaims that the march of innovation is led by nothing else but the vision of general as well as personal wealth, OSS empowers far better wisdom and convenience that effective products can be built more easily. What is more, since a huge part of the Internet itself is based on a number of open source mechanisms – like the Apache Web server application or the Linux operating system - any person who uses the Internet can take advantage of OSS.
There are many books written about the virtues of open source software and each one of them successfully manages to convey a comprehensive compilation of the best possible sides of using OSS. But here we offer the best 5 works which are extremely essential for everybody who wants to take the plunge to try this type of software and is eager to learn the ins and outs of it.
- The Success of Open Source by Steve Weber
This book is a pure example of how a scholarly and yet easy-to-absorb piece reveals specifics of a somehow complicated subject. The author, Steve Weber, artfully chronicles the development of open source software. His provocative and engaging work depicts the various processes, goals and effects of this method of leaving a code open to the public. Everyone who is interested in finding out about the impacts of OSS on the IT-sector should spend some time reading The Success of Open Source.
- Open Sources 2.0: the continuing evolution by Chris Dibona
Published in 2005, Open Sources 2.0: the counting evolution is truly remarkable in its content as it features a collection of profound, deep and thought-provoking essays written by top technology experts in the present day. The papers offer insights into the ways in which open source is gradually slipping into other areas different from the high-technology-oriented ones. Moreover, the essays cover themes related to the developing world and its attempts to start using open source and become part of the already technologically advanced sites.
- Next Generation Democracy: What the Open-Source Revolution Means for Power, Politics, and Change by Jared Duval
Jared Duval craftily examines the interconnections between all sorts of crisis varying from political to environmental and details how such relationships can lead to the application of new efficient tools to tackle different public challenges and common issues. Using the stories of governmental and non-governmental leaders who strive to find workable solutions to a volume of difficulties, Duval conveys a message to the public, thus inspiring people to build much better future.
Are you offering and trying to sell open source to management? This book might just be for you then, as it becomes the ultimate weapon that you need. Open Source for the Enterprise gives to readers not only an outline of technologies and their use but it also lists what skills are required so that one can manage technological products the proper way. Additionally, in order to facilitate the implementation of open source in the modernized IT world, Dan Woods and Gautam Guliani address and answer various questions in the book, including: How will using open source transform an IT department?; What skills are needed to use open source?; What sorts of open source projects are appropriate for IT departments at the beginner, intermediate, advanced, and expert levels?; and many others.
This piece is concerned with some of the most complicated topics relevant to the IT sector but all subjects are demonstrated through adequate and easy to understand bits. At the beginning Karl Fogel points out the most pivotal dimensions of project management, thus disclosing particular tools that are used in many free-of-charge software projects and programmes such as Wikis, IRC, version control and bug tracking. Accepted as one of the best guidance in the market, the book also exhibits and uses as examples already tried methods and directions to ease the work of free software developers and to urge them to combine their skills and knowledge toward a joint purpose.
If you have stumbled across any other useful book on open source software, share your opinion and let us know why it was useful to you.
