I just wrote a review for Linux in a Nutshell, 6th Edition and commented that it seemed as if each successive edition acquired more pages. In the Linux book's case, it isn't true, but it is true in the case of Lutz's book. In fact, between the 3rd and current edition, the book has expanded some 466 pages. Good grief, what accounts for such growth?

"The GNU Autotools (the GNU Build System) is a group of utilities designed to make it easy for developers to create software that is portable across many Unix-like operating systems. Unfortunately, most Autotools documentation is merely reference material, and a serious guide to the tools is needed.

« By way of caveat, let me get out front with the admission that this review involves mainly aspects of the “future history” scenario I find most intriguing, rather than with the story line or characters.While I can get into a good story, I generally read near-future sci fi with a view primarily to the usable ideas for organizing society or for explaining the direction things are going in...

While working on my own book for Apress, Free Software for Creative People, I've also been typesetting a 240 page poetry book by Richard McKane using Scribus, for the publisher Hearing Eye. Years ago I used to use Quark Xpress for this sort of project, so I was pleased to find out that free software can now do the same job.

"Peter Seibel has given me a sneak peek at his new book Coders at Work. Allow me to beat my colleague Xach to the punch by saying This book is dead sexy. When it comes out, you should definitely get a copy. Seibel is a good writer and a good programmer, and I'm a big fan of his last book Practical Common Lisp. You should get that book too.

This article is about writing a book with the help of the free software community. The book in question is Sakai Courseware Management with the main authors being Alan Berg (Me myself and I) and Michael Korcuska, the executive director of the Sakai Foundation.

Amazon's recent remote deletion of 1984 and Animal Farm struck a nerve. There was something so undeniably creepy about a company entering hundreds of virtual bookshelves in the middle of the night and deleting "1984" (of all books!).

Learning to program in Ruby is easy, but learning to program the "Ruby Way" is a much greater challenge. Reading Design Patterns in Ruby has certainly helped solidify my understanding of Ruby's idioms and is a great book for programmers who would like to take their Ruby skills to the next level.