Rebels in cyberspace

Bill Gates has made a great deal of money from computer software over the last quarter-of-a-century. The computer code at the heart of all Microsoft products has seen him involved in a constant tussle with the Sultan of Brunei for the position of the planet's richest man. While it is unlikely he is remotely concerned, he has also been characterised by programmers, upstart start-ups and rivals as the Great Satan of software.

If there is one thing that almost certainly has caused Gates the occasional sleepless night, however, it is the shadow of the Free Software Movement which has been stalking him since he started amassing his fortune in the 1970s. Glyn Moody's Rebel Code shines a spotlight on this growing community of extremely talented people, who believe that the challenge of computer programming lies, not in making money, but in writing elegant code which will make computing easier. And then making the source of that code freely available to others who may wish to modify it, improve it or merely play with it.

This noble, if financially foolhardy, approach has gathered momentum over the last 10 years and characters like Linus Torvalds, who spearheaded the development of the Linux operating system, and Richard Stallman, the founder (he has also been called the saint) of the Free Software Movement are sign-posting a very different future for computers than the one offered by Bill Gates. In this definitive account, Moody traces the history of the Free Software Movement from its origins in the UNIX community 30 years ago, through its embrace of Internet technology leading to its current status as Microsoft's only serious rival.

A decade has passed since Linus Torvalds sent an e-mail on to an Internet newsgroup and asked for advice on how to make a better computer operating system. In the e-mail he said it would never be "big and professional". He could hardly have been more wrong because, in less than 10 years, he and a loose alliance of computer hackers created an operating system - Linux - that challenges Windows NT for the server software market. Linux is also expected to dominate the next generation of hand-held devices and desktop computers.

Rebel Code tells the story of the development of Linux in an engaging and absorbing fashion, and it is clear that Moody has researched his topic exhaustively. In fact it is the sheer volume of information he presents that will serve as the biggest obstacle to this book reaching a wider audience. His attention to detail, while finding echoes in the precise and all-embracing manner in which computer programmers have to operate, also leads to a spirit-crushingly dull read for anyone who does not already share the author's interest in the topic.

Such criticism is churlish, however, because the market for the book is so clearly defined. If you have any interest in programming and how the Open Source movement came into being, than this book is compelling and important. If you only care about using your computer to type, surf and send email, then perhaps you'd be better off with something slightly less exhaustive.

Conor Pope is the Deputy Editor of The Irish Times website, www.ireland.com, and edits the Computimes page