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The Daemon, the Gnu, and the Penguin
In addition to covering a history of free and open source, The Daemon, the Gnu, and the Penguin explores how free and open software is changing the world. It is authored by Peter H. Salus, a noted UNIX, open source, and Internet historian and author of A Quarter Century of UNIX and Casting The Net and other books. Salus has interviewed well over a hundred key figures to document the history and background of free and open source software. In his book, Salus reaches back into the early days of computing, showing that even in "pre-UNIX" days there was freely available software, and rapidly moves forward to the Free Software movement of today and what it means for the future, drawing analogies and linkages from various aspects of economics and life.
204 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
October 6, 2013
Interesting account of the free and open source software. Apart from the fact that Microsoft plays the role of the evil antagonist – which quickly becomes somewhat boring – the book is marred by
– missing introductions, explanations and lists of abbreviations etc., which – combined with the fact that he writes about his subject with sympathetic understanding – makes it hard to read
– hastily written and/or unedited sentences
– typos
– instructions for the indexing function/program that is either erroneously entered or left behind by the function/program – and overlooked by the proofreader
and more.
If you do not know a lot about all the programs, persons, and institutions covered, you will probably have a hard time completing the book.
That is unfortunate, as Salus does tell an interesting and important story. Had the book been better written and edited, I might well have awarded it one or two stars more.
– missing introductions, explanations and lists of abbreviations etc., which – combined with the fact that he writes about his subject with sympathetic understanding – makes it hard to read
– hastily written and/or unedited sentences
– typos
– instructions for the indexing function/program that is either erroneously entered or left behind by the function/program – and overlooked by the proofreader
and more.
If you do not know a lot about all the programs, persons, and institutions covered, you will probably have a hard time completing the book.
That is unfortunate, as Salus does tell an interesting and important story. Had the book been better written and edited, I might well have awarded it one or two stars more.
July 6, 2020
Okay, a bit to unpack here. I'd say this is a decent effort to trace the history of open source software/the free software movement. It's a mixed bag.
What this book gets right:
It's a history of a technical topic, told by someone who was there for a good part of it. I don't know anything about Peter Salas, but he includes some of his personal anecdotes, and I don't have any reason to doubt what he says. In writing a history there's always going to be some degree of subjectivity, and he's firmly advocating for open source software, but I think he does a reasonable job of being objective. Another thing Salus gets right is he goes back pretty far in history, well before to UNIX to the days of DARPA and the IMB 701. (In fact, he actually names this chapter "Ancient History".) I think it makes sense to ground the narrative in the ideas, practices, and practical user needs of a time long before software had been conceived of as a commercial interest. Salus does a good job of tracing this thread across a wide span of time, locations, people, institutions, and technologies, so it gives you a real sense of the scope of complexity of the issues of determining ownership of ideas. Furthermore, he brings in all the big names and key terms, so this book gives you a brief who's who tour of IT. I knew most of these names, but only because I have an interest in the history of IT (and all learned piecemeal), but I still a fair amount.
What this book could have done better:
In a word - editing. There are some minor copy editing problems. There are a few technical editing goofs that even casual readers will notice (like p. 158, "To opt for a different browser, Mozilla or Firefox, perhaps." That's like opting for a different operating system, Microsoft or Window, perhaps.) Okay fair enough, I'd have plenty the same mistakes even with a dozen drafts. My real problem with the editing is structure and content. It felt like it really need a strong editor to go through and slash a lot of bloated text throughout. Some of the content was so interesting, but you had to sift through all these random side stories, footnotes that added no value, parenthetical info that should have been dropped, just a lot of sifting through nonsense to get the good stuff. I had this recurring sense that Salus started with a box of random notes on IT and just tried to cram in as many as possible. They could probably cut a third of the book without losing anything of interest. And the book is interesting! I just feels like some required reading assignment for class where you're trying to figure out what you really need to pay attention to. Another aspect of this is the target audience: who is this book for? I'd love to recommend this book to people interested in the history of open source, but Salus drops a lot of names and terminology in passing. To contrast with what I wrote above, it's great to flesh out the specific contributions of Richard Stallman, Ken Thompson, Linus Torvalds, Tim Berners-Lee, etc.; it's not great to have passing name drops without knowing if you were supposed to know who that it, or references to technical terms or concepts that a casual reader wouldn't understand. So is it a book for experts? Not really, it's just uneven with how much Salus seems to expect the reader to know, almost like different chapters came from different drafts or from different conference presentations. Lastly, the cover says, "How Free and Open Source Software is Changing the World", but the book never really delivers on this promise. Yes, it has changed the world, and yes, this book covers some major threads in that history, but Salus never seems to quite close the deal on that piece. The end kind of devolves into some lofty opinions about: society, human nature, and capitalism; Microsoft's bad faith business practices attacking any perceived threat to their market position; and gushing about (relatively new at the time of publication) Google, Amazon, and other tech companies that have embraced open source. This book came out in 2008, so in fairness you can't expect Salus to have anticipated the concerns about these same companies today, now that they're in market-dominant positions. But still, I think an editor would have help to temper his tone while still making his underlying point: that open source software can still mean making money.
I don't know if he's interested, but I'd like to see him revisit this topic, maybe do a 20th anniversary edition or something. I support open source, I support the effort to tell its history, and I'd support Salus (or someone else) to take another stab at telling the story.
What this book gets right:
It's a history of a technical topic, told by someone who was there for a good part of it. I don't know anything about Peter Salas, but he includes some of his personal anecdotes, and I don't have any reason to doubt what he says. In writing a history there's always going to be some degree of subjectivity, and he's firmly advocating for open source software, but I think he does a reasonable job of being objective. Another thing Salus gets right is he goes back pretty far in history, well before to UNIX to the days of DARPA and the IMB 701. (In fact, he actually names this chapter "Ancient History".) I think it makes sense to ground the narrative in the ideas, practices, and practical user needs of a time long before software had been conceived of as a commercial interest. Salus does a good job of tracing this thread across a wide span of time, locations, people, institutions, and technologies, so it gives you a real sense of the scope of complexity of the issues of determining ownership of ideas. Furthermore, he brings in all the big names and key terms, so this book gives you a brief who's who tour of IT. I knew most of these names, but only because I have an interest in the history of IT (and all learned piecemeal), but I still a fair amount.
What this book could have done better:
In a word - editing. There are some minor copy editing problems. There are a few technical editing goofs that even casual readers will notice (like p. 158, "To opt for a different browser, Mozilla or Firefox, perhaps." That's like opting for a different operating system, Microsoft or Window, perhaps.) Okay fair enough, I'd have plenty the same mistakes even with a dozen drafts. My real problem with the editing is structure and content. It felt like it really need a strong editor to go through and slash a lot of bloated text throughout. Some of the content was so interesting, but you had to sift through all these random side stories, footnotes that added no value, parenthetical info that should have been dropped, just a lot of sifting through nonsense to get the good stuff. I had this recurring sense that Salus started with a box of random notes on IT and just tried to cram in as many as possible. They could probably cut a third of the book without losing anything of interest. And the book is interesting! I just feels like some required reading assignment for class where you're trying to figure out what you really need to pay attention to. Another aspect of this is the target audience: who is this book for? I'd love to recommend this book to people interested in the history of open source, but Salus drops a lot of names and terminology in passing. To contrast with what I wrote above, it's great to flesh out the specific contributions of Richard Stallman, Ken Thompson, Linus Torvalds, Tim Berners-Lee, etc.; it's not great to have passing name drops without knowing if you were supposed to know who that it, or references to technical terms or concepts that a casual reader wouldn't understand. So is it a book for experts? Not really, it's just uneven with how much Salus seems to expect the reader to know, almost like different chapters came from different drafts or from different conference presentations. Lastly, the cover says, "How Free and Open Source Software is Changing the World", but the book never really delivers on this promise. Yes, it has changed the world, and yes, this book covers some major threads in that history, but Salus never seems to quite close the deal on that piece. The end kind of devolves into some lofty opinions about: society, human nature, and capitalism; Microsoft's bad faith business practices attacking any perceived threat to their market position; and gushing about (relatively new at the time of publication) Google, Amazon, and other tech companies that have embraced open source. This book came out in 2008, so in fairness you can't expect Salus to have anticipated the concerns about these same companies today, now that they're in market-dominant positions. But still, I think an editor would have help to temper his tone while still making his underlying point: that open source software can still mean making money.
I don't know if he's interested, but I'd like to see him revisit this topic, maybe do a 20th anniversary edition or something. I support open source, I support the effort to tell its history, and I'd support Salus (or someone else) to take another stab at telling the story.
May 27, 2019
Very interesting, though the author tends to ramble.
January 23, 2013
I give this a high rating because it does what it sets out to do very well.Peter Salus was involved in the history of Unix and Linux, which makes him a good guide to that history. He presents it in a straightforward and spare style, so don't expect a gripping page turner. But if you want to have good accurate data on who did what and when, this book will deliver. Also, it is a relatively quick read because of his spare style.
February 3, 2016
God, what a slog. Just facts, facts, facts, with no narrative or analysis. This is not the book you want to read. I suspect Glyn Moody's Rebel Code: Linux and the Open Source Revolution is the book you want to read.
August 19, 2016
Short and confusing. The decision to not follow chronological order makes it hard to understand the influenses from one event to the other. The author assumes you are familiar with the technologies mentioned. The last chapters are a statment of the author beliefs regarding open software and (wrong) preditions of Microsoft dismissal and the fall of captalism as we know it.
Read
January 13, 2014Meh. Hard to follow, and kind of a salad of "These guys did this thing, and then these other guys did this other thing". It pains me to say it but it doesn't hang together as any kind of intelligible story.
October 29, 2011
Thought this was a great exposition for how the internet truly came to me. Namely through UNIX and open source!
March 16, 2012
fascinating look into the past by someone who takes the time to introduce all who were part of the computing and internet revolution
Want to read
October 12, 2019mentioned in UNIX and Linux System Administration Handbook (4th edition)
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews