From Eric S. Raymond: Many of you know that I have been working on a book which is an attempt
to capture much of the unwritten engineering lore of the Unix
community.
I welcome comments and feedback on “The Art of Unix Programming”; like
“The New Hacker’s Dictionary”, it’s a book that can only achieve its
goals
by reflecting and focusing the wisdom of our entire community.I have released Chapters 3 and 4 of the draft of “The Art of Unix
Programming”
at the usual location: http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/taoup/.

Chapter 1 has two new sections: “What Unix Got Wrong” and “Flexibility
In Depth”. Chapter 2 has minor revisions.

It’s been called “the most important book of the
software frontier of the 1990s”–“the definitive work on the open
source evolution”–“a landmark piece of information technology” — “a
must read for anyone that wants to understand what open source software
is all about.” The Computer Press Association bestowed it with its Best
Nonfiction Computer Book Award of 2000; “ForeWord Magazine” voted it
Business Book of the Year, and “The Designer’s Bookshelf” gave it its
Editor’s Choice Award.The accolades for “The Cathedral & the Bazaar,” the book of seminal
essays, (originally published online) by hacker philosopher Eric S.
Raymond, acknowledge the impact of open source software on the
technology world. Raymond’s evangelism helped persuade Netscape to
release their browser as open source, put Linus Torvalds on the cover
of “Forbes Magazine” and Microsoft on the defensive, and helped Linux
rock the world of commercial software. As spiritual father of the open
source revolution, he has created an unparalleled philosophical
analysis of the hacker world with his writings, and has shown how
profoundly the open source movement affects the world at large.

O’Reilly has just released a revised and expanded edition of “The
Cathedral & the Bazaar” (US $16.95 paperback, $24.95 hardcover),
including new material on open source developments in 1999 and 2000.
New essays address the economics of open source and open source as a
competitive weapon. Predictions in the chapter “Revenge of the Hackers”
are examined from the perspective of one year later, and new ones are
added. “There’s a juicy new section on the mechanics of bazaar
development that discusses communications structures and the
nitty-gritty of parallel debugging and why it works so well,” says
Raymond. “I develop a more detailed analysis of project forking.
Evolutionary handicap theory–why peacocks have feathers and stags have
horns — is probably important to any account of open source developer
motivation; I go into that. I also take a harder look at the economic
question of why open source software isn’t an underprovided resource. A
statistical appendix on the growth of the fetchmail project has been
added.”

Raymond adds: “I ran the book revision process in the same way the book
describes open source development. I let it be known that I would
accept and incorporate good patches, constructive criticism. I rewarded
people who generated good insights by giving them credit in the
revision. This is how we do things in hackerland; it’s our combination
of individual visions and collaborative synergy that makes us
powerful.”

Interest in open source software development has grown enormously in
the past year. According to the August 2000 Forrester Report, 56
percent of Global 2,500 companies use some type of open source software
in their infrastructure, and another 6 percent plan to install it in
the next two years.

“The Cathedral & the Bazaar” is a must read for anyone who cares about
the future of the computer industry. According to Bob Young, CEO of
Linux pioneer Red Hat, “This is Eric Raymond’s great contribution to
the success of the open source revolution, to the adoption of
Linux-based operating systems, and to the success of open source users
and the companies that supply them.”

“The Cathedral & the Bazaar” is the manifesto and the declaration of
independence of a revolution in progress.

Chapter 5, The Magic Cauldron, is available free online at:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/cathbazpaper/chapter/ch05.html

For more information about the book, including Table of Contents,
index, author bio, and samples, see:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/cathbazpaper/

For a cover graphic in jpeg format, go to:
ftp://ftp.ora.com/pub/graphics/book_covers/hi-res/0596001088.jpg

Read an interview with the author Eric S. Raymond here:
http://opensource.oreilly.com/news/raymond_0101.html

O’Reilly is a registered trademark of O’Reilly & Associates, Inc. All
other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

Kelly McNeill writes: “A recent editorial appearing on osOpinion.com dealt with comments made by Mac creator Jef Raskin and his opinion of Apple’s upcoming next generation operating system OS X. The somewhat controversial editorial generated a ton of mixed response on the our site. As it seems, Mr. Raskin’s thoughts on OS X (and Unix) were very misunderstood and he has since stepped up to the plate to clear the air and responded to the technology community at large.”

From ZDNet News: “With a government deadline looming, competitors and investors will be watching closely to see how VeriSign structures a potential deal to sell off its business of registering top-level domain names.”

From LinuxWorld: “Your stash of XML documents is probably growing exponentially. Uche Ogbuji provides an
overview of database types, then surveys the wide range of tools available for storing and
managing XML data stores.”

Anonymous Reader writes “Make has always been described to me as if one were baking a cake. You have a prescribed list of ingredients, each one with its own place in the recipe. The directions are followed and out pops a cake. Make is great for cake. But it really shines when you’re baking things like a motorcycle. Read the full article at LinuxLookup.com“

IDG reports: “Network service provider Equant NV announced Wednesday an international roaming service for WAP (Wireless
Application Protocol) that will allow customers to reach WAP services via a local phone number in 22 countries.

Although mobile service providers commonly offer roaming service to other countries and continents for voice calls,
WAP users have had to make an expensive long-distance call back to their carrier’s WAP gateways at home when
they wanted data services over the mobile Internet system.”

LWN.net provides an overview of djbdns, an alternative to the BIND software for domain name service. The author of djbdns is so confident in the integrity of his program modules that he’s offering a $500 reward to the first person who turns up a security hole in the code.

A memory leak and a USER command issue may lead to an environment that facilities DoS attacks from within proftpd, a popular FTP client. Get the full details at LWN.net.

A few weeks ago, Tucows announced that it was shuttering its BSD software and support channel. This week, the software portal has changed its mind, stating that it will once again provide BSD support and updates starting on February 12.