Open Source Books

EDITED 29 Jun 07 to provide URL in Comment for free access to the thesis.

When then Major Simmons first published this paper for the defense intelligence training system, I praised it and published it for my international network of intelligence professionals.

Maj Simmons went on to become Col Simmons, and then Congressman Simmons (R-CT-02). He was defeated by George Bush rather than his Democratic opponent, losing by less than 90 votes to a good man who has no relevant experience, simply because he was a Republican, as am I.

This remains the single best examination of defense NON-exploitation of open source intelligence (OSINT). Since it is not available from Amazon, I will note that if one Googles for this, they will find the complete paper at my website.

Amazon is in my view the hub for all world knowledge, and I am very much looking forward to supporting them in expanding to include dissertations, papers, and Op-Eds.

This is one of two books that are essential resources for software acquisition - "Software Agreements Line by Line" (ISBN 1587623692) for commercial software, and this one for open source.

The SCO debacle with respect to Linux, and earlier cases of open source challenges, such as that related to MySQL, underscore the importance of understanding what you can and cannot do under the provisions of the various open source license models. This book provides a thorough understanding of each of the major license models, a comparison of open source to commercial models, and topics such as intellectual property protection, governing laws, and related issues.

I like the way the author, a practicing attorney and respected expert in cyberlaw and Internet governance, places open source in context with background information on software patents, open source goals and the Open Source Definition. This is key to understanding the licensing models, including GNU GPL, Copyleft, Aladdin Free Public License, and Open Software License. It's also key to understanding the limitations and possible vulnerabilities inherent with these license models in particular, and open source models in general - especially regarding ownership of code, derivative works, and the legal ramifications.

An interesting chapter for anyone who is considering releasing an open source product, "Rolling Your Own Open Source License", covers these issues from the developer's perspective, and gives excellent advice for selecting the appropriate open source license model.

The appendices and associated CD ROM contain a wealth of reference material, ranging from significant provisions of UCITA and UETA (1999), to a summary of every major and some minor models not covered in detail in the body of the book. Two areas in the appendix that merits attention are Fundamentals of Copyright Law, and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), both of which are germane.

This book is augmented by the author's weblog, which is an invaluable resource and should be visited. The CD ROM that comes with this book is a searchable resource for quickly finding license template information and related laws.

I will give this to you free! No need to buy - government sponsored work - free to the public. Dont spend your money on this!

This is a superb presentation of Douglas Harding's timeless message. Key quotations from his unique approach to seeing into your true nature are blended with photos in a way that support the messages themselves and create a truly beautiful and harmonious book. A must-have book for anyone interested in Douglas Harding's unique approach to the age-old question: Who am I?

Products arrived in 2 days!! They were just as I wanted, a quick reference for the OpenOffice products. Can't wait to see what other Software packages they also cover.

I read this book after having read about 160 pages of the O'Reilly "Learning Python". I found Guido van Rossum's introduction to be very well-written. His examples showed some interesting things that "Learning Python" hadn't, such as the pickle library, and he included a clear but brief treatment of Python exception handling. Possibly not the best for a complete beginner, but if you've seen a little Python before, it does a wonderful job. Be aware that this text is available as part of the standard Python documentation, but having the hard copy is friendlier to the eyes and part of the profit goes back to open source.

This book is a great in-depth analysis of how Open Source works in relation to the society around it, and the issues pertaining to copyrights, how the different types of Open Source licenses affect the end user, etc.

Among the interesting details is a summary of those times Open Source licenses have actually been challenged legally, and the outcome of those cases.

Anyone embarking on an Open Source project that they will want to defend in the future should read this book.

I think this book is the only one to cover such a broad variety of free security tools. It focuses in particular on the pros and cons of using them in a business setting, including details such as the availability of support, functionality, and ease of use.

There are some very useful grids or feature matrices when a specific product category offers multiple solutions. These are very useful as they allow you to tell at a glance which products have what features. From there you can quickly rule out the products which do not meet your needs.

Grab one at a book store and flip through it, the writing is easy to digest and "friendly" without sounding too clinical.

It is nice to be able to look up the problems you come up against in a new OS. This book is well done and has been very useful for my conversion to Linux. It even came with a Hardy CD.

I have toyed occasionally with both Red Hat and Ubuntu over the years, but I definitely meet the definition of "non-geek." Installing these operating systems before always required some degree of struggle, and not uncommonly (especially with some earlier distros) I would simply fail. But that has changed. The current 8.04 version of Ubuntu partnered with this book is frankly outstanding.
First, a word about the operating system: this Ubuntu distro, code-named Hardy Heron, may well be the one that has finally made Linux as easy as Windows. I had always previously laughed at such claims from Linux enthusiasts, but this distro impresses me. It is the one that may at last enable me to defenestrate completely. And this guidebook is the perfect match, using normal language. One thing that it does very well is explaining what the few text commands that it uses actually do, instead of just instructing the reader to type it into the command line and leaving you wondering what exactly those "magic words" meant. There is a single short chapter about using the command line, but 99% of what the guidebook leads you through uses the GUI, so if the command line intimidates you never fear.
I installed Ubuntu 8.04 dual-boot with Windows XP on my laptop effortlessly. Not a single thing went awry. The new partitioning tool that is used during the installation is a great improvement over those in any of the (few) other Linux distros I've seen. The book follows step by step. My laptop is about 4 years old, so I am sure that a newer laptop may have hardware that is not as well supported and effortless. But on mine everything just worked, including my wireless internet.
Though they are enthusiastic, sometimes getting an understandable answer from the Linux community can be challenging. I had always struggled through installing Linux software before, especially if I needed to compile it myself. In fact, I can count my successful compilations on one hand. I never knew that GUI-based tools like Synaptic Package Manager or GNOME App Install were available to make it all so easy (assuming that a deb package is available, as there usually is) and again the book walks you through flawless examples. One example used for software installation is a program to automatically detect and load a driver for any ATI or NVIDIA graphics card- something which has historically been very difficult on Linux systems
My biggest criticism- and it wasn't enough to cost half a star or anything like that- is that the CD included with the book only has the i386 version of Ubuntu. If you want the 64-bit version you have to download it and burn the ISO to disc. (In fairness, the i386 version will load and run on a 64-bit machine, but only in 32-bit mode.) One of the reasons I bought this book was that I can't seem to pass the checksum when I downloaded the ISO, so now I am waiting for my disc from Canonical so that I can install Ubuntu on my desktop.
So, if you describe yourself as a "computer user" rather than a "computer geek," this is an outstanding book. If you know enough to know that Ubuntu exists then you almost certainly possess the minimal computer savvy required to use this book. I know that this review sort of morphed into a review of Ubuntu in addition to the book, but it is difficult to separate them. Suffice to say, the book walks you step-by-step through multiple examples of everything that you have to do. It also explains such details as what the differences are between the various file formats in which Open Office Word Processor can save documents. Almost all of such important minutiae are covered.

A must have for anyone working with UNIX from beginner to advanced system programmer.