I've read this book right after the "Just for fun" by Linus Torvalds, and the approach is somewhat different. "Just for fun" has the light weighted style of a talk show with all the inside details that make the delights of every geek fan. "rebel code" goes beyond this with a global overview of the Open Source/Free Software revolution. Everyone is there!
It also provides a deep view from the perspective of the "survival of the fittest" projects. Popping-up to the light from the mass of ideas just be absorbed on the global wave, or even disappear, all the relevant projects and participants of this movement are accurately contextualized.
This book is a must read for everyone that wants to get to know a bit more of this amazing new world that emerges from the freedom of choice in what concerns information.

A lot is discussed in this book, and I'd agree with Eric Raymond's comment that this is the best history of the open source movement. It starts off from Richard Stallman, GNU and "Free Software Foundation" and goes to the Mozilla foundation and the new trendy name of "Open Source Movement." The best parts are the email excerpts from various mailing lists, which take you back into history when things were still being defined.

Of course, most of the book deals with Linux only but isn't that the best case for hackers?

I ordered this book from Amazon because I had just ordered Linus Torvald's book Just for Fun and this book was also recommended. I am glad I did. Torvald's book was really fun to read and it really created an interest in the Open Source software phenomenon that I have heard about, but had mixed feelings about it for a few years. Rebel Code added to Torvald's account, a rather complete history to the whole phenomenon. The book covered elements that I have heard in the news, but wouldn't have come to mind, like the entry of IBM, the role of Novell, Sun, etc. As each important piece of software was discussed, some seemingly small like GIMP, DNS and Sendmail, the author paused to give a short bio of the author and how they each stumbled into this FOSS world, some quite accidently. There were so many fascinating stories, I am going to hold onto this book.

The book is mainly based on the information collected by the author from various people via e-mail, telephone or personal communication between September 1999 and September 2000, and the interview with Linus Torvalds at a critical juncture in his life, in December 1996, as well as other interviews with key players from the last three years.

The book begins with a story of Richard Stallman, who labored for years to create a Unix-like system, written from scratch that would be free. Hw worked alone at first; then he gradually received contributions from to others, including - thought neither of them knew it in 1991 - Linus, whose Linux program would provide the last major pieces still missing from Stallman's huge software jigsaw puzzle.

The book covers the GNU project from its formal beginning, when in January 1984 Stallman started working on Bison, which was a replacement for Yacc. Having limbered up with this relatively minor task, he moved on to one of the most important. One of the key elements of a Unix system is the C compiler. After an unsuccessful attempt, he returned to Emacs and released GNU Emacs in September 1984. In October 1985 he has founded Free Software Foundation and then proceeded with C compiler and the C library.

The book then describes the biography of Linus, his years at the university and his work on his operating system, his experience with Minix, quite popular at that time in academic area, and fight with Tanenbaum, the author of Minix. The book then brings out the history of the development of Linux in detail.

Besides Linux, this book covers Open Source movement in Netscape, the development of TEX, Perl, Cygnus, etc., and how big companies like IBM adopt Open Source software and contribute to its development.

I would also recommend "The Cathedral & the Bazaar" by Eric S. Raymond in addition to this book.

The book gives a complete history of open source development starting from the earlier days of RMS and Linus. The strong point of the book is that the depth of coverage on open source history is unmatchable. My most favourite chapters are the ones that describe the early development of Linux and the history of Perl.

Reading the book gives the impression that author's bias against the RMS-style free-software. Also the author gives enough hints of his dislike for Microsoft's style of proprietary software. And towards the end, as the author starts explaining linux' entry into the corporate place, the book tends to be a bit dragging.

Overall, a must read for any open source enthusiast.