Raymond, climate

[Ben Finney]

Michael Kesper <mkesper at schokokeks.org> writes:

> Hi,
>
> On Thu, Dec 03, 2009 at 10:10:54PM +0100, Theo Schmidt wrote:
> > Carsten Agger schrieb:
> > > Just an observation: While the "Open Source Initiative" may have
> > > failed, I did appreciate some aspects of "The Cathedral and the
> > > Bazaar".
>
> I'm not too sure.

> 1. The analogy is false: Cathedrals were built very much like he
> describes bazaars.

That's irrelevant to the analogy, since it doesn't compare the building
*of* cathedrals versus the building *of* bazaars. Instead, it compares
the social activities that *go on within* already-built cathedrals
versus bazaars, and the resulting *output* of those societies.

> 2. Development models are orthogonal to the question of whether a
> software is free or not.

(The term you want is not “a software”, since the English-language
“software” is uncountable like “hardware” or “sand”. Better to use the
(copyright-inspired) term “a work”.)

I agree, and that seems to be close to the core of the difference
between “open source” versus “free software”: Raymond emphasises the
utility of the process as more important than the freedom of the result.
I prefer to talk about free software, as I suspect do you.

Note, though, that Carsten's comment still holds: there are many aspects
of the essay that are appreciably good.

It's a valuable story and a good analogy for development processes. It
shows that free software is *better* at encouraging bazaar-style
development, but it doesn't *guarantee* it — as pointed out by its
examples of cathedral-style development of free software.

-- 
 \       “If consumers even know there's a DRM, what it is, and how it |
  `\     works, we've already failed.” —Peter Lee, Disney corporation, |
_o__)                                                             2005 |
Ben Finney
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