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Academic Criticism of ESR's The Cathedral & The Bazaar

Posted by Hemos on from the juicing-the-conversation dept.

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.

2 of 187 comments (clear)

  1. Scientific by Matts · · Score: 5

    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)'

    --

    Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
  2. Some very good points... by teraflop+user · · Score: 5
    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.