Ron Goldman and Richard P. Gabriel have published Innovation Happens Elsewhere, their 2005 book on open source software, online under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license. The book covers the ins and outs of open source software development for business without using much jargon. Here’s the authors’ summary of who the book is for:

We wrote this book to help business executives understand when and how an open-source strategy can help them to achieve their company’s business goals. We also want to provide support for the managers charged with implementing that strategy in their day-to-day work running a project that makes use of open source.

The book is also aimed at the engineers who may need to work on open-source projects. We want to give them an idea of what they will experience and what will be expected of them. We also want to give them the information they will need to educate their managers and co-workers about open source.

Third, the book is for anyone interested in a better understanding of open source–its larger history, its philosophy, and its future prospects.

One of the more novel parts of the book may be its comparison of open source and agile methodologies (a hot topic in software development).

IHE is all about software. One can imagine in the not too distant future someone writing an equally thorough and approachable Creativity Happens Elsewhere.