I tend to think that technical books are obsolete. The rate of change in software and systems makes them outdated before they hit the bookshelves, even if these are virtual books and virtual book shelves. The tedious writing, editing and publishing cycle makes a book better but old. Community generated content such as blogs and forums seems to provide a much better documentation than books.

However, others find books more useful than I. Books are also a great tool to introduce people to a new field. Therefore I see the release of the book ModSecurity 2.5 by Magnus Mischel, the first book dedicated to ModSecurity 2.x, as very good news. Beyond its immediate value, the book also indicates the surge of interest in ModSecurity, which is also mandated by the explosion of traffic on the ModSecurity mailing list.

I think that the ModSecurity user community and the WAF community in general can benefit a lot from such books.We will need to wait for the first readers to know how good is the book itself.