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Academic Criticism of ESR's The Cathedral & The Bazaar
Gorgonzola sent us the linkage to First Monday's critique of [ESR]'s The Cathedral and The Bazaar. C&B is criticized academically, cited as being an oversimplified view of OSS, as well as a distortion of reality. Well-written critique, and one that should provoke discussion.
Microsoft talked tough to competitors, but generally backed down when their bluff was called. That, folks, is what is known as ordinary business practices.
That is called bully tactics at best, and if its ordinary business, then business should be ashamed of itself. And even if it is common, it doesn't mean that the industry shouldn't fight against unethical and/or illegal practices when they happen.
For example, Microsoft threatened to withold Windows 95 from IBM. IBM didn't budge from their position. Microsoft backed down.
IBM is one of the few companies that is big enough and powerful enough that they can play hardball with Microsoft. IBM also has a track record of playing dirty (although they seem to have significantly cleaned up their act in the past few years), which they also have spent significant time in court with the government over.
In any case, Microsoft may have eventually backed down, but they did manage to stick IBM with more expensive licensing than some of the other competitors were paying, and they also delayed giving IBM access to Windows 95 long enough that it was a competitive disadvantage for IBM.
RMS is for Free Software defined by the GPL.
He (and many others) should get credit for all the GNU utilities that come with a Linux distribution.
RMS view of OS is not the same as ESR view. I don't see RMS as trying to take credit for Open Source, but he wants people to acknowledge the GNU utilities that are out there.
Just try to use Linux w/o GNU.
Steven Rostedt
Steven Rostedt
-- Nevermind
I'm not talking internet companies. I'm talking software packages. "e-Bay" does not sell their software.
If you have a dream for a piece of software and you want to try to get rich, go for it.
I do, actually. I just don't think that selling it is the way to get rich
Can you name anyone who has gotten rich selling software in the last ten years? (If you say "Andresson", I'll have to point out that Netscape gave away their browser pretty much for free, even in the beginning.)
The cake is a pie
...is that a lot of people assume that the Cathedral model of development is essentially the same as that of the commercial world, and the Bazaar is that of free software. They forget, or don't notice, that the essay's primary example of Cathedral development is the Emacs core, which is most definitely an example of free software!
It seems that this 'academic' critique makes the same oversight, which makes me a bit less willing to accept its arguments.
The example I read said something about a bad famine causing a population to not grow as tall during that generation - but that subsequent generations also didn't get as tall as before the famine, but were heading that way.
Could it also be that regular old natural selection is at work here? People who "wasted" scarce resources growing "needlessly" tall died out, while those who had a predisposition to shortness survived.
Cook the gene pool under said conditions and cool. The population is now shorter, obstensibly due to malnutrition.
But wait a bit longer, and see that new generations are getting taller now that the selective pressure is removed.
Phenomena explained, using only standard evolutionary/genetic theory, and by Occam's Razor is a better explaination.
Now I am not saying that this methylation thingy is wrong. But it is not necessary to explain the phenomena you cited.
BTW, I am not a biologist, by I am a chemist, and I have done a little work studying methylation of DNA, specifically as a way to treat cancer.
First, off I really enjoyed this article and I think that he makes some really good points about problems in Free/Open Source Software. In particular, I think that he has some good points about the problems projects have as they grow. I have seen a lot of symptoms he mentions in the growing pains that Debian has been going through.
I think, though, that he has picked the wrong target for this article. He makes a lot of good points, but I don't really think that he is refuting ESR in most of them.
I think that his "Catherdral and Bazaar Postulates" are exaggerated. I did not get the impression that ESR believes in these postulates, either from CATB or his later writings. There are probably some people who would agree with these postulates, but I get the impression that ESR is more pragmatic.
He says:
I don't think that ESR thinks the Bazaar is for everything and every project, and I don't think that it is implied in CATB. There are plenty of Free Software projects that are closer to the Cathedral than the Bazaar, and there is nothing wrong with that. Each project should use whatever form works for its participants and best meets the goals of the project. The point of CATB is that you should examine your development model and see if opening it up might help the project.
More like software needs to not suck. We need more competition in software so that the software gets better, and Open Source Software is one way to help get it. Microsoft isn't going to disappear, but maybe they'll be forced to make more reliable products.
I don't think ESR is that idealistic, or that Open source Software depends on that kind of idealism. Flame wars happen. Big deal. Sometimes they may distract people from getting real work done, but often the real flamers are just wannabes, so their lost time does not really slow progress. Conflicts are fine, and the right kind of conflicts help make the software better.
Anyway, it was a good article, but I don't think that it was really refuting CATB.
Preventive War is like committing suicide for fear of death. - Otto Von Bismarck
This is as it should be for work dealing with Open Source. Put it out, get feedback, fix it, repeat.
--
It's October 6th. Where's W2K? Over the horizon again, eh?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
"What I find is an excellent example of why academia, and academic criticism, has so little respect outside its own little pond."
Without entirely repeating myself from an earlier thread, or seeming to defend academia, I feel compelled to point out that this isn't a paper in the academic tradition.
=> Doesn't ground itself in an existing body of theory.
=> Doesn't refer to other, refereed academic or scientific works.
=> Doesn't attempt to support, refute, or extend an existing body of theory through additional evidence and logical argument.
=> Doesn't attempt to create a new body of theory from first principles and support it with experimental evidence.
=> No footnotes, citations, or other references.
=> No layout of arguments or evidence from cited references.
So - an interesting polemic, yes. An academic work, no.
sPh
ESR has often complained about being flamed rather than being given constructive criticism (e.g., the Bruce Perens/ESR dispute), so I simply have to wonder.. Exactly how will he react to criticism like this, which is much more academic in nature?
Of course, the reason why this comes to mind is because of a post in a previous discussion (I believe regarding ESR's answers to the questions posed by Slashdot) that suggested that flaming ESR was pointless because it would engender an attitude in him along the lines of "no, you don't understand. I'm right, you're wrong, so get out of my way".
~ Kish
I think that the author made a very good point about Microsoft. While I don't know how much ESR really called for the "destruction" of Microsoft (was he referring to total destruction, or "IBM" destruction-- lose a *lot* of market share to the better alternatives, but still keep a profitable business?).
The thing is, I see the Linux community calling constantly for the downfall of Microsoft. I hear them rallying behind the DoJ, claiming that we need to destroy the Microsoft monopoly. Yet, if the number of people on Slashdot is any indication, there are enough people using Linux, *BSD, and other operating systems to show that Microsoft *can't* have a monopoly. It's self-contradictory.
That doesn't mean I like Microsoft. I think the products are shoddy and the FUD is distasteful.
But I guess Microsoft is a sort of unifying force to a lot of people. Ironic, then, that the very people that Microsoft unites are attempting to destroy it.
Give MS time. It will eventually hang itself, and fade into the background. It will become a geek-accepted company ("They don't make the best products, but *at least* they don't have a monopoly, like [insert new evil empire here]"). It will be a good place to invest money. It will do some interesting research, come up with some interesting stuff from time to time, but really just be another software company-- kinda like IBM is with hardware now.
Well here's my take after reading the whole thing...
:)
.sig)
,hacker Perl another Just)'
This doesn't seem to be a critique of CatB at all - more squarely aimed at the open source concept in general.
However... It's just a nice collection of articles, writings and statements we've seen and argued about before. I've seen nothing new here. What I do see is a lot of stuff from a few individuals who've had a bad experience with OSS - or even who've pointed out weaknesses in the model (and yet often pointed out solutions - a fact this article doesn't cover). We've all seen the writings of Ritchie and Zawinski on this subject - often well thought out, sometimes flawed.
There's a bit in there about development models - how patches to Linux get rejected and waste developer time causing bad feeling. But someone should go and read Linus' statements on the ISDN stuff from the kernel dev list - they are very clear as to why sometimes good patches get rejected. That's just the nature of the beast. However it doesn't amount to wasted time. Those patches don't vanish in a poof of smoke - they could be integrated better (or written better - whatever is applicable) later. Even on commercial projects you don't always get your code included just because you spent a 3 months writing it (voice of experience here...).
Yes, it's a good article covering a lot of pitfalls of open source development. Yes, it's a horribly flawed article. No, open source isn't a panacea - that doesn't exist (unless you're in s/w marketing).
Move along - nothing to see here.
(really need to change this
perl -e 'print scalar reverse q(\)-:
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
Well written (except for a missing close bold tag anyway *g*) and fairly good at summarizing the various criticisms of open source. Unfortunately I don't see too much new thought, just an organization of some good points that have been made before.
I also don't agree with a lot of these points. For example, he makes a point of the dictatorial nature of many a group's management. There is a bit of a difference between authoritarian management and the normal usage of the word "dictatorship", in that this is dictatorship by consent. Leaders are delegated dictatorial powers by their group in the interests of efficiency. No guns are being pointed at developers heads. Dissenters can always fork their own version of the software should the power be actually abused. The dictators aren't rewarded disproportionately and often work a lot harder than most contributors.
He repeatedly refers to ESR's papers as "marxist." While they may be biased, it would be rather surprising to find marxist bias in the writings of an avowed libertarian-capitalist. I think this is clear evidence he wasn't able to completely parse what ESR was really saying. Or maybe ESR is a closet communist after all?
I think he's also a bit overly concerned with distro fragmentation. It *does* lead to irritating problems, but nearly always problems with solutions, and usually fairly simple ones. There is no doubt it can be done better, and I expect Linux will evolve to do so if the problems created become serious enough. The real concern here is that the response will likely be for the market leader to become the de facto standard. It might be better if the most functional and efficient distro layout triumphed. But, good enough often wins over better, and open source is not a solution to *that* problem.
As to open source not being a magic bullet, I think nearly everyone agrees, it's almost a straw man. Worth pointing it out one more time since some don't get it, but not exactly surprising.
The academic parallel is a worthwhile subject of study. Stephen Adler's Open-Source/Open-Science conference recently is clearly an indication that others have also noticed the similarity. But don't be too quick to conclude which side will learn more from the other. It's likely both can benefit.
I do not think the article dismisses CatB as socialistic rhetoric. The main point I got out of it was that CatB describes Open Source as a new phenomenon, whereas it really is another form of scientific community.
I thought the article was well-written and accurate. One especially valid point is that the failures of open source do not get any attention. For every Apache there are probably dozens of aborted projects that never worked out. This is not necessarily a problem, because the people that worked on the failures learned something and had fun coding. But it does give us a skewed view of how effective the open source methodology is (because the successes are far more visible than the failures). In the commercial world, the "failures" usually end up being released at some point, so we see the whole gamut of results. -YoJ
The fundamental problem with the whole "Open Source is communism" argument is this.
If you create a widget and give it away, you lose the widget.
If you create a program and give it away, you don't lose the software.
This is difference fundamentally effects the economics of software.
Now people like to talk about "lost sales" as a sort of loss similar to giving away a physical object, but in reality this is rarely the case. If you look at the success of "Linux" vs. the success of "Minix", it is pretty clear that the "lost sales" experienced by Linus in giving away his product for free were minimal. Had he attempted to sell it, it would have failed. Given the noteriety he has gained, I do not doubt that from a purely self-interested standpoint, he was better off in the long run giving it away. I suspect this is true for a lot of Open Source authors.
The cake is a pie
This is an interesting polemic, well-written and thought provoking for the OS community. However, I would have to respectfully disagree with the statement that it is an "academic" (that is, of or from the academy) criticism.
;-).
Reason: no footnoted arguments from, or references to, any academic literature from the last 200 years or so in the areas of economics, political economy, business (evil MBA stuff), or software engineering. No reference (that is, detailed references with footnotes) to current or past theory in these areas. No cited quotations from academic journals. And finally, no obtuse, buzzword-driven jargon
Now, opinions may differ on the value of academic research and publishing, particularly in areas such as economics and business. However, there is a fairly well-established framework for presenting an idea to one's peers for scrutiny in an academic sense, and this essay doesn't follow that framework.
Personally, I think it would be helpful if both ESR's CatB argument and some counter-arguments _were_ written up in this format and hashed out in , say, the Journal of Political Economy. YMMV may vary on that thought, of course. But this essay isn't that.
sPh
This paper is FUD at its worst. Bezroukov first numbs the reader with several statements that rely on links for support rather than explaining the points made in those links: e.g. "(see Jamie Zawinski's letter)"
... "its [sic] a moving target that never really gets out of beta."
;-)
Bezroukov's point is often unclear, which may be why he just throws in quotes from others. He even contradicts himself about the payback for OSS developers:
"Who will be rewarded financially for the enormous open source effort? Burnout of OSS leaders like Linus Torvalds is all too common to ignore."
followed later by:
"In both science and programming,those involved aren't in it for the money. Most of the OSS developers are doing it to chase a dream, not to build up their bank balances."
More pap:
"A casual trip through cyberspace will turn up evidence of hostility, selfishness, and simple nonsense."
Welcome to the world of free speech - this is why we have moderators.
"Linux isn't secure and it isn't stable," my informant writes,
WHAT???? Linux is much more like a constantly improving work toward the goals recognized by the majority of its developers. No, wait - it's
exaclty like that.
"Although people are physically separated, they all are working toward a common and important goal. That fuels the Linux movement."
Yes, it does. If Bezroukov understands this, why spend so much time crying about the "problems" of the open source movement? Why try to shoot down Linus with the anticipation of burnout or authoritarian rule? Oh, yeah - it's FUD.
Open source is a completely new progressive phenomenon (bright future of mankind) with no analogs in history.
I find nothing within CatB that suggests this. As a matter of fact, I found the following which would seem to refute it:
Strike oneAll open source projects are the same and employ the so-called "bazaar model"
CatB definitely does not say this. Here's a quote:
That is, no open-source project ever starts out being developed in bazaar style. In fact, just about every project starts out as the work of a single individual. Eric recognized this, but this Nikolai person somehow misinterpreted the paper.Strike two
Microsoft needs to be destroyed.
I searched CatB for the term Microsoft. Not once is it mentioned that Microsoft needs to be destroyed.
Strike three
I couldn't read any further. If his entire paper is based on the fact that he somehow attributes these "postulates" to Eric's paper, then his entire paper is based on flawed assumptions.
Either this character really dislikes ESR (why did he say Eric had a "vulgar Marxist" interpretation of the phenomenon?), or he's simply attacking a famous person to whip up some publicity of his own (very likely).
99 little bugs in the code, 99 bugs in the code,
fix one bug, compile it again...
I'm a leaf on the wind. Watch how I soar.
The GNU project has always been part of RMS's campaign against proprietary software in general, not against any particular software vendor.
send all spam to theotherwhitemeat@ropine.com
It's a shame that this piece has to have the flaws it does: namely some rather bizarre appeals to authority (Jesse Berst) and red-baiting.
The reason it's a shame is this:
I got really sick of the bumper crop of "papers" that sprang up in the wake of CatB, all written by people long on verbiage and enthusiasm, but short on falsifiable premises. All of them were passively accepted as "good" on these pages and duly posted, making me long for a checkbox in the preferences to disable display of "enthusiastic but amateur pseudoscholars" items.
I waver from week to week on how I feel about ESR's body of work. I'm happy that CatB inspired the Netscape folk to give Mozilla a shot. I'm pleased that someone is trying to describe the open source development model sytematically. On the other hand, there's a certain middle-American craving for respectability that comes out in the style and execution.
That aside, the author of this piece seems, by the time he reaches his conclusion, to have read ESR the wrong way. Where CatB and friends tend to cleave to descriptives (with ESR's HOWTO on the subject of project management offering the prescriptives), this author seems to take the whole thing as a manual that needs to be confronted because it has suspicious ideological flavor.
His conclusion, in part, reads:
However, little seems to have been learned from the overall history of programming and software development. Ignoring the lessons of history may make open source an interesting footnote in the overall history of computing a century from now.
That's an interesting idea, I suppose, except that "open source" development existed prior to ESR calling it such. The development model springs from the personalities of the community that practices it. Steven Levy's Hackers provides a nice psychological history of just where this comes from. It is not something anyone dreamed up to storm the gates of Microsoft, because it predates Microsoft. Reading Hackers, once more, Bill Gates inspired the ire of early home computer hobbyists precisely because of his resistance to sharing the source to his BASIC. In some ways, Gates and company are the radical new development model on the scene if we want to talk history.
Following from that, once you strip open source development of some "meaning" outside "the way enthusiasts have been behaving toward the software they write for the last thirty years", it's hard to argue that it can "fail" and become a footnote to anything because it's not a directed ideological or theoretical movement, except in the heads of some of its advocates. The burden of proof lies on the newcomers: people who would proprietize the process. Open source programming developed "naturally," before Richard Stallman (who has applied a certain ideological bent to the process, and who doesn't show up in Levy's book until the very last chapter.) It certainly developed before ESR decided to identify it on his own terms, label it, and make it more palatable to business. It didn't develop as a reaction to big business, but was already in place culturally when big business came to computing. It developed, in some ways, before there was anything we would recognize as "computing."
Linux has already "succeeded", and it succeeded the moment Linus felt happy that he had some sort of working Unix on his home machine. It succeeded wildly when the rest of us agreed that it was indeed a reasonably working Unix and that we'd like it on our computers, too.
"Open source" on the whole has already succeeded, too. The author may wish it away because it makes him see commies under the bed, but it's a model that existed prior to attempts to prove or disprove it in papers. It's an expression of a community's personality and can fail about as much as any element of a popular culture can. Which is to say that while it may mutate in form from time to time (its latest variation being better organization and application of project management tools) it will probably always be around as long as there are hobbyist programmers. The fact that it has given us usable tools makes it a "success" by any standard that's true to the form itself.
------------
Michael Hall
mphall@cstone.nospam.net
Michael Hall
mph.puddingbowl.org
The closest this article gets to criticising any of Eric Raymond's studies of Open Source is saying that the gift culture analogy is simplistic - a point which most people would probably accept.
/., but I think its underestimating ESR to attribute this view to him. Noone says the Bazaar model is universal (indeed RMS is very cathedral person). Very few people seriously think we can destroy MS and I personally don't even very much want to. There is no way anyone thinks the gift economy can be universal, and you only need to look at the interactions of ESR, RMS and Bruce Perens to see a lack of "ideal cooperative people".
The points at the top of the article do represent a "vulgar" (the author seems fond of that word) view of open source which is quite common on
The author goes on to tout a model of the open source community as a scientific one, which is quite a good analogy I think, but in no way contradicts the CatB view. The author seems to have a chip on his shoulder about "vulgar Marxism", something I suspect ESR would disown. However, if "vulgar Marxism" is a belief that labour creates value, then frankly count me in (actually all socialists, including Benjamin Tucker, believe(d) this, it predates Marx by quite a long way).
Finally, the author goes on to endlessly list every kind of problem ever seen in an OSS project. Surely this is only criticism if you were some kind of loony optimist to begin with. None of the problems listed applies only to open source.
The whole thing seems to be an attempt to create a straw-man argument of the CatB thesis and throw mud at it.
You shouldn't be surprised to hear ESR's writings compared to Marxism by scholars. He's analyzing the world in a similar way as Marx did: he's looking at groups of people and what their economic interests are, and he assumes that economic interests (in a general sense) are primary, and he's looking at the dynamics of the relationships between these groups or classes.
The difference between Marxists, capitalist-libertarians, and Randroids isn't in the way they analyze the world; they only disagree about which class of people should triumph.
Look at "Atlas Shrugged". It's very close in structure to many socialist realist fantasies: the class that does all the work rebels against oppression by the shiftless rulers. Rand just split the population in a different way, moving all the common folk into the "shiftless ruler" camp and having the technologists rebel.
In fact, the writings of a lot of pro-capitalist folk these days is just inverse Marxism: like Marx, they assume that human beings are fundamentally economic creatures and act out of economic motives, and that the ideas people hold are closely linked to their class interests. The only difference is about who should win.
The is a great critism. I, myself, have often wondered about the cases where the OSS development model doesn' work. The reasons are usually often and ignored, until now.
Also, I really hate the whole Press thing OSS supporters have need doing. "Fight for the dream, not the competition." Say it. Remember it. Eat it.
--
Was Sinz really referring specifically to Open Source? Or did the author of this paper just add the part in brackets to "support" his thesis?
Part of my job involves maintaining closed source code that has some parts going back almost 16 years, and believe me: I am supporting some very old mistakes (some of them were even made by me ;-) and I will never be able to get rid of them. I fail to see any relationship between this phenomenon and the open-vs-closed issue.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
The writer spends most of the article debunking claims that ESR never made, and the tone is too personal - It doesn't sound anything like a proper critique.
One of the few valid points he raises, though, is the one about Microsoft's importance to open source culture...
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Because Microsoft is a monopoly (whether you believe in antitrust legislation or not, MS is a monopoly), they can thrive by not offering viable solutions. Frankly, they can and do ram garbage down our throats and make money. This is an abuse of capitalism, it is damage to the software and online industries, and that is the problem.
Microsoft is currently the company exploiting this problem; it usurped the throne from IBM. If Microsoft folded and nothing else changed, another company would likely take Microsoft's place as monopolistic vendor of garbage you must buy anyhow. Indeed, Larry Ellison of Oracle considers himself heir apparent.
Often, people will confuse Microsoft's current position with the company itself; it is certainly easy to equate the two. IMHO, a true open-sourcer wants to see Microsoft forced to play fair, not necessarily eliminated. Then again, it is unclear whether Microsoft can survive in such a competitive environment, forcing it to play fair may destroy it. That is not the aim, however.
It is not enough for Linux to work very well. The utility of a piece of software is directly related to the size of the community that it allows you to connect with. That is, mindshare is key. Linux would be relatively useless if it only had fifty users.
Linux is anti-Microsoft in one very important way: Microsoft is at competitive war with Linux. Microsoft perceives (rightly so) Linux to be a threat to Windows mindshare, and are taking action to destroy the power of Linux to take mindshare away from Windows. They are attempting destroy the mindshare because they currently do not see a way to destroy the actual code (hard to do in the OSS world).
Linux and Microsoft are competing for the same scarce resource: would-be users and developers. Thus, Microsoft and Linux are at war.
--The basis of all love is respect
The quote kinda loses it's original meaning when misquoted as "Linux doesn't scale".
The "Linux doesn't scale" argument and many of the other examples he presents about personality problems aren't really problems in the open source model itself- they are inherent problems with people working together. In fact, it is a testimony for the robustness of the model that it works as well as it does IN SPITE of these problems.
When such personality problems hit a closed project you usually don't get to hear about it. You can often tell by the result, though...
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
I would have to agree completely with the point of not being able to tell how many closed source projects die. While we can see (although probably wouldn't notice) products that are released and flounder, we have no way of seeing projects that are killed before being released.
The point about when OSS projects die, the code and/or ideas can live on is a good one. If an OSS project dies, then any good code and/or ideas can be recycled in another OSS project.
Another point I'd like to add is that OSS projects seem to die for reasons other than being beat by a commercial product. They tend to die by either being replaced by another OSS project, or because for one reason or another the developers lose interest in continuing the project. Most closed source projects die because they are either killed by a competing product, the company thinks that they will be killed by a competing product or something similar. There are some important differences.
GNU/Linux is implemented to mostly follow standard SYS V AT&T Unix API's/system calls
. asp?String=derive.from*1%2B0&ACT=SELECT
GNU/Linux has (almost) no AT&T code.
GNU/Linux builds on the works of other coders.
Based on these (what will be called facts for the sake of this posting) you refer to GNU/Linux as a CLONE.
4.4 BSD is implemented to mostly follow standard SYS V AT&T Unix API's/system calls
4.4 BSD lite has (almost) NO AT&T code.
4.4 BSD builds on works of other coders
(These are facts)
Therefore, using your own criteria, BSD is ALSO a CLONE. There is *NO LEGAL TRACE* of AT&T Unix left in present day BSD.
based on:
http://www.cup.cam.ac.uk/elt/dictionary/default
Do you dispute this statement:
Gnu/Linux is/was formed by a process of derivation from existing AT&T Sys V system and userland programming specifications.
How about this one:
GNU/Linux was/is DERIVED from APIs created for use in AT&T SYS V Unix.
What about the shorter:
GNU/Linux is derived from AT&T Sys V Unix
'Reality' in this case is where you decide to draw up your definitions. Its the OLD debate of is Unix a philosophy, (pipes, small tools linking together to make bigger tools), a set of API's (if you conform, you are Unix), a set of source code (if its not THAT code, its not Unix), or the registered trademark of AT&T/Novell/SCO/Open source group. Mr. Richie was attempting to get past the LEGAL "Unix is a registered trademark" issues by calling things that function overall like a Unix(tm) system "Unix Derived". Smacks of the newer debate of is 'Linux' a kernel, the kernel + 'userland', or a SPECIFIC distribution.
The older question that applies here is:
"If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, looks like a duck, and when you eviscerate it - looks like a duck, is it a duck?"
And, being that GNU/Linux has most of the features/attributes one 'expects to find on a Unix(tm) platform' *AND* can't be called Unix(tm) (because Unix(tm) is a registered trademark), not to mention the SOURCE of the API format, the SOURCE of the talent that writes GNU/Linux, and the reason Linus started this was to have a Unix of his own, calling GNU/Linux a derivative of Unix(tm) is a correct statement. There are too many links to a Unix(tm) past to deny the word derived.
I'm happy for that you Mr/Ms Sushi, that the world is so black and white, so clear cut, that the only reason GNU/Linux is not derived from Unix is something as simple as sourcecode.
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
When I learned science at school, which feels like a long time ago (but in reality isn't), we learned that if the premise upon which you're trying to prove something is wrong then the proof itself must also be wrong.
:)
,hacker Perl another Just)'
The premise of this discussion seems to be the points at the top of the article - none of which I see exactly touted in CatB (although I'm sure ESR leans towards some of the points). The article makes out ESR to be an open source fundamentalist. I think he's anything but a fundamentalist - ESR by his many discussions in the past can be shown very clearly to be a pragmatist.
Nowhere in CatB does ESR state that the Bazaar model is a silver bullet (IIRC it very carefully states that it is _not_ a silver bullet). Nowhere does it state that open source is an ideal community without disagreement (IIRC it states that disagreements are out in the open and so you'd better be right on your point or smarter people will show you to be wrong).
I think criticism of CatB is important. I don't think open source is a silver bullet. But I think the premise of this article is wrong.
Now I'm going to go read the rest of it
Matt.
perl -e 'print scalar reverse q(\)-:
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
So much in this article was negative, and I sensed a political agenda in it. Particularly repeated comparisons (of Open Source) to Communism and Socialism, apparently to inspire faulty logic like the following:
Open source is like Communism.
Communism failed.
Therefore, open source is doomed to failure.
The conclusion does not neccesarily follow from the arguments... even if we accept that both arguments are true (not everyone will).
There was also a comparison to Lysenkoism. Now Lysenkoism is a politicized (Stalinist, to be precise) version of Lamarckism, which proposed that acquired characteristics could be inherited by subsequent generations. It was wrong. It doesn't work, as thousands of starving Siberians could attest. It doesn't work for living things. Genetics simply doesn't work that way. But DNA code is fundamentally different from binary code. Acquired characteristics can be "inherited" by later, improved versions of binary code. Using the loaded word "Lysenkoism" in describing open source is misleading at best, and deliberately misleading at worst.
As I stated above, I detect a political agenda.
I am not distracted by grammar and spelling errors in my own writing. ;-)
Also, I am quite willing to draw a distinction between an impromptu Slashdot posting and an academic paper when it comes to matters of spelling and grammar. I do not think my comments were unfair or hypocritical.
Matt, your reasoning and your reading comprehension are sloppy. First, you mistakenly assume that the paper is discussing CatB and ESR and nothing else. The author is seeking to describe the entire movement, not just ESR, and quotes dozens of people. You seem to think that it is a premise of the paper that ESR is a fundamentalist, and that if he is a pragmatist, the entire paper falls.
The paper refutes many points that ESR has made quite effectively, but it is a refutation of specific writings by ESR, not of ESR as a person. So ESR's beliefs that don't appear in the papers don't matter that much (after all, surely ESR has changed his opinion on some matters since he wrote CatB).
Then, you admit that you haven't read the article! (This is fairly obvious).
But that isn't nearly as lame as the fact that at least three moderators wasted their bonus points on you.
You write: I don't think one can dismiss ESR's ideas merely because they will never become reality ....
Excuse me: in his series of papers (CatB, the Noosphere paper, etc), ESR was claiming that he was describing reality. That's what the paper was discussing! Does Open Source actually work the way ESR says it does?
The paper makes a good case that Open Source works a lot more like academic science than like the Potlatch. It would be nice if the paper were better organized, true.
Oh, come on. The paper is a better refutation of Noosphere than it is of CatB. Eric says Open Source is like the Potlatch (a gift economy). The paper shows that it is more like the scientific community, that this is a much better model.
Excuse my language, but it's true.
Even Microsoft's PR dept would have the decent to get their quotes right. You have at least one misatributed, and added words to at least two others _which changed their meanings_. This is from reading only four of the quotes, two (the fourth one I didn't recognize).
Specifically: the addition of the word "computer" to Feynmann's quote, the addition of "[Open Source]" to the "programming is like sex" quote (hint: _all_ programming is like that), and jdstone@ingr.com was quoting either Ambrose Bierce or Mark Twain, I forget.
If you wish to be taken at all seriously, checking the references is a must.
The rest of the paper displays an equivelent slipshod approach to argument that the quotes do to citations.
The article's description of ESR's thesis as "[a] socialist interpretation of software development" really interested me. I've never associated ESR with anything socialist - he's never bothered to disguise his anarcho-capitalist views in his writings. "Having a better/different way" != Marxism. Certainly ESR's view of open source is rosy, but I don't think he ever described a Workers Paradise.
Neutron
I get my kicks above the
From Dennis Ritchie..
It seems odd that he would refer to GNU/Linux as a derivative of Unix (I would assume from the context that he is referring to the entire system), since it is clearly not. If it was, it wouldn't be any different from the 80 or so flavors of Unix already out there.. What makes it so different is that most of it was built from practically the ground up (for example, the compiler, gcc). Which rock has Dennis been hiding under lately? Or is he just full of ego these days..?
Not meant to incite (for all you DR fans out there.. ;), but to me this comment seems a little odd.. Otherwise a nice gesture, however.
~ Kish
I don't think this essay is an example of particularly cogent criticism. It consists largely of a series of quotes that appear to lend credence to a series of opinions about the nature of "Open Source," but it is well thought out and lucid. I know it is declasse to bring it up, but I found the the spelling and punctuation errors a serious distraction.
All of that said, however, I think we (meaning the human race) need to do a great deal more thinking then discussing how we organize our labor for personal and community gain. As an example of that phenomenon I enjoyed the essay a great deal.
I, too, think that much of the current thought on free software and open source is somewhat utopian and idealisitc, but I think that is a good thing. Reality will always modify theory, but to change reality requires ideas that lie beyond attainability. I don't think one can dismiss ESR's ideas merely because they will never become reality -- they have and will continue to change the limits of reality, even if they are never fully attainable.
My own personal belief (and, I will admit, slightly utopian hope) is that the economic need for commerical software has ceased to exist. Instead I think programmers will work as professionals (like lawyers and doctors), paid for their knoweldge and skill. Because production and distribution of software can now be done at nearly zero cost, there is no longer any need for companies to produce shrink-wrapped software.
Given that, I think the work started by RMS, and considerably furthered by Linus, Alan, et. al., will continue -- programmers writing code they want to write and then giving it away. That fits the "scientific research" view of the author of the essay discussed here.
I do, however, also think that companies will begin to use and need such software. As they do so, they will have specific needs that are not addressed by that "research software." These companies will pay programmers (as professionals, not employees) to produce those programs. We professionals will insist that such programs be open source/free software -- contributed back to the professional community.
I use surgery as an example. When a doctor (perhaps employed in a univeristy hospital) develops a new surgical technique, he or she does not keep it a secret and then package and sell it to other doctors (Triple Bypass 98?), instead it is published in a medical journal and taught to other doctors. The discovering doctor becomes more valuable, gains prestige, brings contributions to his or her hospital, etc. No economic disaster is portends. Quite the reverse.
Please note that I believe this applies to software only, (or to technique only). The analogy does not extend to drugs or medical devices because these DO have considerable manufacturing costs -- they are not zero cost distributable.
I'm very glad to see discussion such as this essay, and I hope to see more of it.
The dismissal of CatB as being 'oversimplified' without taking into account that ESR is still writing new essays (such as the NooSphere article) which expand on the ideas presented in CatB. Its pretty obvious that CatB was intended just as a beginning, not as an end unto itself. CatB is also not frozen in stone, as ESR has occasionally revised and expanded it.
Perhaps most troubling is dismissal of CatB as being socialist rhetoric. Since ESR is, if anything obviously much more predisposed towards capitolism than much of the rest of the free/open software world, this seems tome come from way out in right field.
One perceived difference is that many OSS developers do it for the love of coding. This misses the point that many scientists work for exactly the same reason. I could double my salary if I left science, and have spent more than one year working with no income at all, living off savings, just to stay in the field.
I think we both have a point. The point I was trying to raise was that the author is trying to make CatB invalid based on a number of bulleted points (and then sets out to elaborate on those points). But the points themselves were in fact not existant in the Cathedral and the Bazaar - so how could the whole article be correct.
,hacker Perl another Just)'
Anyway - I'm nearly through it now so I'll post a follow up.
perl -e 'print scalar reverse q(\)-:
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.