If you're at all interested in the mechanics of large scale open source software development, this paper about the FreeBSD SMPng project is well worth reading. It's a fascinating look into a very interesting project, both from a technical point of view (SMP kernels are fun!) and from a project management basis (herding cats is hard!). It doesn't pull punches, and at least as far as I can tell from what I've read on the various mailing lists it gives an honest and accurate view of how the project has progressed.
