The Cathedral and the Bazaar is a very good dissertation about two completely different ways in which people write software: the open-source approach (with Linux as the main example) and the closed-source approach.
The entire text can be read freely at http://catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/
Going into the details that the book covers would be superfluous. Like reinventing the wheel. I'll just say that it's a good reading for any software engineer, software architect or programmer.
