Explaining OSS to Normal People?

[Griffith Feeney]

At 05:57 PM 4/28/01 -1000, you wrote:
>This grant came as a total surprise to us, and we have a very limited time
>to write the grant proposal and submit it.  We're scrambling to create the
>necessary documentation before the due date...

Two books that may be useful to cite in the proposal, and have a look at if
you can find them quickly. Both have been available in the Kahala Barnes
and Noble, don't know if they have copies now.

The first may be better for introductory perspective for someone who knows
nothing of Linux. I've read the first several chapters, its very well done.

Moody, Glyn (2001). Rebel Code: Inside Linux and the Open Source
Revolution. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Perseus Publishing.

The second is very good as well, but is a collection of writings, rather
than a single narrative, and will mean more to people with some background.

Dibona, Chris, Mark Stone, and Sam Ockman (1999). Open Sources: Voices from
the Open Source Revolution. Sebastopol, California: O'Reilly & Associates.

[Recent O'Reilly books show place of publication as "Beijing, Cambridge,
Farnham, Koln, Paris, Sebastopol, Taipei, Tokyo. Usual citation practice is
to put the first place indicated, but "Beijing" might look rather odd. You
might want to use "Cambridge", which the proposal readers will all have
heard of, rather than Sebastopol, which possibly none of them will have
heard of.