First off, as a non-hacker and beginning programmer, this book was very difficult to get into at first.  Mainly because it was about a topic I myself was only starting to get involved with.  After reading most of the book I finally started becoming enthralled with the story when I hit the Magic Cauldron Essay, and I literally could not put the book down when the author started describing the creation of Open Source.  It has definitely opened my eyes about many things, worldly and within my own interactions among my immediate peers.  This is not a book for the non-dedicated, but it is satisfying for those who would learn more about hacker culture and late 90’s programming history.  

The one topic I wish to address in my final review of the collection of essays/book, is the comments made on page 222.  

“Will the Linux community actually deliver a good end-user-friendly GUI interface for the whole system?...That is, while hackers can be very good at designing interfaces for other hackers, they tend to be poor at modeling the thought processes of the other 95 percent of the population well enough to write interfaces that J. Random End-User and his Aunt Tillie will pat to buy.”

I think that truly is the crux of Linux operating systems.  They will never gain full strength until the programmers that run them are willing to create them for people who don’t know how to program.  So many people simply won’t purchase or use such devices because they won’t know how to use them.  Like many things open source, they focus so much on usability and adjust-ability that the actual product, while of high quality, is simply not user friendly.  I have learned to use Ubuntu and Arch Linux at very minimal levels.  I am still in the beginning learning stages of many things programming.  If Open Source were to ever truly succeed at overtaking the market many hackers, honestly, have to get off their high horses of expecting other people to devote their time to learning enough about computers and programming to buy them.  There are so many things in the world that wouldn’t exist if those same people didn’t spend their time doing those things instead of learning to program.

Another interesting aspect I would like to re-mention is that many hackers tend to come from cultures that either have enough state support, or they have enough financial support, to learn to program without having either jobs, or problems taking care of basic survival needs.  I think that this is definitely emphasized by where many of the major open source projects come from, and the people who create them.  It would be very interesting to see a study that reviewed where many hackers came from, on the basis of financial assistance and nationality.  I would be very interested in the results.

My last comment regarding this book is that the author seems concerned that Open Source may never truly take hold because of the Open Source communities need to focus so much on the goal.  He indicates that many hackers are, “more effective sticking to relatively narrow, pragmatic arguments.”  With that I say, while the Open Source community will definitely continue to thrive it needs a couple of things before it is truly successful.  Number one, the community must be willing to develop more user friendly interfaces in their products released for the public, and these interfaces must be made with the understanding that others will not know how to program.    Number two, Eric S. Raymond discusses that programmers need time and space to create truly great things.  That being said, there are many wonderfully distracting things on the Internet and I know that it’s not just me who is distracted by them.  While I know that I am only beginning to grasp just how much it can take to recognize the organization of a program; and learn how to re-tangle the web, so to speak; but everyone must also be willing to admit to being distracted and unable to complete work.  Raymond’s comment regarding the need for the Open Source community to stay focused comes immediately to mind with regards to this topic.

On a final note I would like to mention that despite some of my comments regarding some of the needed steps for Open Source to promote, this book nevertheless inspired me.  I have a feeling that installing Linux on my own computer alongside Windows is in the immediate future, along with a more intense focus on my MIT Open Course Ware studies into beginning programming with Python.