Eric S. Raymond\u2019s essay, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, compares two different models of creation. The Cathedral Model is the traditional, corporate style, described as planned, closed-source, and built by “wizards” working in isolation. On the other hand, the Bazaar Model is chaotic, collaborative, and open-source, relying on many people instead of just one master\/wizard. I strongly believe the Bazaar model is clearly superior.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Cathedral model is ultimately focused on the bottom line or requirement. The primary goal isn’t making the absolute best piece of software; it’s just to fulfill a contract and make money. Developers are definitely talented people, but their work is heavily restricted by corporate rules. Having to protect their intellectual property and being pressured to deliver a product that is “good enough” just to meet a schedule means the resulting code will not necessarily be the best version. This pressure and secrecy corrupt pure creative passion. The Cathedral\u2019s process prioritizes the company\u2019s financial interests, rather than the quality of the code that they are generating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As for the other model, the Bazaar model, it is driven by intrinsic motivation\u2014people just wanting to make cool stuff. Raymond highlights this with his first key rule: “Every good work of software starts by scratching a developer\u2019s personal itch.” People contribute because they generally need a problem solved or want to improve a tool that they use. This drive is similar to what I have experienced in my own class projects. My most successful collaborative project was creating an app for a course on Human-Computer Interaction. It wasn’t a solo genius effort. It was a small-scale, open-source environment with my four other partners. By constantly sharing code and getting outside perspectives from partners and classmates, we were able to develop this application much faster than I could have done alone. That collaborative perspective proved to be essential in this app development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Raymond explains the reliability and speed of this collaboration directly in his most important principle, the Linus Law: “Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.” In the Bazaar, developers follow the rule to “release early, release often.” This means that even buggy, incomplete code gets exposed to thousands of people who are motivated and immediately act on debugging as a team. In the closed-source Cathedral, a bug might be hidden for months until it is found. In the open-source Bazaar, that same bug would be found and fixed within days or even hours of release. Going back to crossword puzzles in system programming, I could not find the issue with my code for the life of me, and I spent hours on it. As soon as I shared it with friends and asked for their input, I was able to correct my simple mistakes and complete the assignment on time. If it weren’t for the act of sharing my code, I would not have been able to complete my assignment before the due date. This collective power is why Raymond argues that the closed-source world cannot win an arms race. The Bazaar model is just simpler, faster, and more reliable because it taps into a huge global pool of talent and uses human passion and emotion of satisfaction to its advantage. For the future of serious software innovation, the open, decentralized Bazaar model sounds like the only logical choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Eric S. Raymond\u2019s essay, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, compares two different models of creation. The Cathedral Model is the traditional, corporate style, described as planned, closed-source, and built by “wizards” working in isolation. On the other hand, the Bazaar Model is chaotic, collaborative, and open-source, relying on many people instead of just one master\/wizard. … Continue reading Reading 07: “The Cathedral and the Bazaar”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5117,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/arvin-islamgomes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/arvin-islamgomes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/arvin-islamgomes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/arvin-islamgomes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5117"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/arvin-islamgomes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/arvin-islamgomes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/arvin-islamgomes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31\/revisions\/32"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/arvin-islamgomes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/arvin-islamgomes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/arvin-islamgomes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}