Review of "Perspectives on Free and Open Source Software" edited by Feller J, Fitzgerald B, Hissam SE and Lakhani KR

The volume is structured along 5 parts, some containing cohesive sets of articles, some loosely related ones. The three chapters that make up part 1 report on attempts to explain the FOSS phenomenon from the perspective of the psychology and sociology of its main actors. In particular, these articles try to explain what leads FOSS developers not to sell the software they create, but rather regard that software as free. The question appears to be framed initially in terms of explaining "free as in free beer" rather than "free as in freedom" [1], presumably in order to keep the attention of the business reader. However, detailed investigation soon reveals the complexities of the issue and the inadequacy of that frame of reference. Part 2 discusses issues relating to FOSS evaluation, where the term "evaluation" is used in a broader sense than in software engineering. The term here designates an attempt to ascertain not only the value of open source as a development methodology but its worth and long-term prospects as a movement. Three of the chapters address technical questions, including interesting discussions of the effects of public access to source code on security. The remaining three chapters contain analyses and (at times extravagant) responses to (similarly extravagant) claims about the inherent superiority of FOSS found in the literature, particularly those by Raymond [2]. Part 3 counters the impression left by part 2 that software engineering these days is mostly about politics, economics and anthropology by presenting actual software engineering tools and processes used in FOSS development. Part 4 returns to economics and introduces a characterisation of FOSS as a phenomenon typical of markets driven by user innovation, discusses business models which incorporate elements of FOSS, and voices opinions of software vendors on such models. Finally, part 5 bundles together articles on legal aspects of FOSS and its social implications. This is the least cohesive but possibly the most interesting part of the book in that it discusses, though to a limited extent, the underlying philosophy of FOSS and the social and cultural conflicts that oppose it to the status quo. Part 5 also includes an enlightening legal analysis of FOSS licenses, focusing on the most famous of them, the General Public License (GPL), and chapters on broader cultural, economic and policy issues, such as the increasingly important topic of the role FOSS plays and might play in the governmental and public sectors.