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.

Comments

Scientific

[Matts]

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.

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(\)-: ,hacker Perl another Just)'

Needlessly negative

[drox]

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.

Flawed but welcome

[evilpenguin]

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.

Some very good points...

[teraflop user]

Lots of good points:

• With respect to the gift economy, I absolutely agree. The gift economy is largely an anarcho-romantic notion popularised by Kim Stanley Robinson. The scientific model (peer-review, building on the work of others) is and always has been a more accurate model.

  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.

• With respect to Microsoft, again the author is spot on. I am reminded of the end first Batman movie, in which the Joker tells Batman 'You made me', to which Batman replies 'You made me first'. Microsoft finds itself responding to a Linux threat, but it may well be Microsoft's contempt for its customers which has put Linux where it is.
• The criticism of Linux' security may well be fair, but at the same time can be compared against the record of NT, Office and Internet explorer, which are hardly better. Having said that, I don't think there is any doubt that some of the commercial unices are far more secure than either Linux or NT. Security hasn't been a 'sexy issue' until recently.
• On project management and development dictatorships: It does seem to make a difference when the dictator is an individual (Linus), rather than an organisation (TrollTech, Sun), so the 'cult of personality' call is fair. Having said that, I still think Cathedral is an important and interesting piece of work. Most importantly, it came first. Later works have the benefit of referring to it and of consulting a much wider range of OSS projects. Even though some of ESR's ideas may be wide of the mark, his conribution in starting the discussion and laying a framework of ideas must not be undervalued.