It brings OS to life in a way that is completely accessible, explaining it's significance as a business and social model for many kinds of institutions, and its profoundly non-technological promise. He sees OS as the liberation of the geek culture, for which he obviously has great feeling and empathy. It's clear that Pavlickek has been trying to explain to people for years why anybody should care about OS, so he's written this book to make sure the argument continues and widens. Pavlicek claims that OS explodes the myth of the anti-social geek. In a world where dread stereotypes of geeks pop up on the evening news nightly, nothing, he says, could be farther from the truth.
Geeks are quite social, they just have a different set of priorities.
In the Linux community, bands of people come together all the time to talk about OS software and, in some cases, the free software movement. Pavlicek covers some well-known OS history, but he also breaks some original ground, including when he talks about the moral values of OS beyond technology and software. One of the key values of OS and its community, he argues, is truth. In a world where people are constantly exchanging ideas, evaluating concepts, and suggesting enhancements, it is vitally important that everyone speak the truth as he sees it. If someone fails to speak the truth, the process of creating software will be greatly impaired.