http://www.softpanorama.org/OSS/index.shtml
CatB in a new light
This fall Raymond has been touring Europe promoting
his book. He most kindly made his way by Trondheim
where he gave an unforgettable series of speeches. In
one of these speeches he poses the question why nobody
had articulated the bazaar mode of development prior.
He says there are a handful of intelligent,
articulated hackers that had already observed the
phenomena, but none had spelled it out. Why is that?
Raymond asks. His suggestion is that hackers like to
think that their success in developing software is due
to their own brilliance. All hackers liked to think
so, and that is why nobody had tried to look into the
matter more closely before Raymond did.
Let's permutate Raymonds question a bit, and ask: why
is it that the hacker community is not questioning the
apparent flaws in the 'Cathedral and the Bazaar'. Paul
Feyerabend writes:
There comes then a moment when the theory is no longer
an esoteric discussion topic for advanced seminars and
conferences, but enters the public domain. There are
introductory texts, popularizations; examinations
questions start dealing with problems solved in its
terms. Scientists from distant fields and
philosophers, trying to show off, drop a hint here and
there, and this often quite uninformed desire to be on
the right side is taken as a further sign of the
importance of the theory.
Unfortunately, this increase in importance is not
accompanied by better understanding; the very opposite
is the case. Problematic aspects which were originally
introduced with the help of carefully constructed
arguments now become basic principles; doubtful points
turn into slogans; debates with opponents become
standardised and also quite unrealistic, for the
opponents, having to express themselves in terms which
presupposes what they contest, seem to raise quibbles,
or to misuse words. Alternatives are still employed
but they no longer contain realistic
counter-proposals; they only serve as a background for
the splendour of the new theory. Thus we do have
success; but it is the success of a manoeuvre carried
out in a void, overcoming difficulties that were set
up in advance for easy solution. (1993, p. 30)
Answering almost with Raymond's own words: can it be
that we hackers like to think that the success of our
software is due to a genial, new way of development
that we have come up with ourselves? Is it truly so?
CatB is not a software engineering essay. It is an
anthropological study. However, it contains material
about the bazaar, the hackers' way of doing software
engineering. Central traits to the bazaar is the open
process, the freedom to do with the code what each
individual developer wants, and a high degree of
cooperation. Raymond mentions Linux as an archetypal
bazaar, yet in a letter to the author David Miller, a
central Linux developer, writes:
Date: Tue, 5 Oct 1999 18:40:06 +0200 (CEST)
From: David S. Miller
\> is it so that you
\> core Linux kernel developers are doing much of the
discussing and
\> planning outside of the Linux kernel mailinglist?
It is true to a large extent, and in my opinion it's
the gem that
keeps us at such high productivity rates.
It's a surefire method by which us core developers can
obtain
the best signal to noise ratio. Discussions happen
more efficiently
and productively when you know you're talking to
someone with a clue
and you don't get barraged with responses from folks
who are perhaps
not so clueful and not so weathered on the topic as
the core
developers.
I.e. there is a mismatch between the map and the
terrain, the map here being Raymond's bazaar and the
terrain being how things work in the real world. While
there is an open forum, areas for community building,
the development in itself is being done in a closed
fashion. The results, i.e. the source code, is up for
public review, so the product itself is still open.
The process, however, is a closed one, and it is the
process more than the product that Raymond emphasize
as the bazaar model.
__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Kick off your party with Yahoo! Invites.
http://invites.yahoo.com/
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Aug 11 2000 - 14:29:39 EDT