The Cathedral and the Bazaar : Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary

While I'm happy to finally have gotten around to finishing this book, my intent was to read this set of older essays critically now that time has passed since the most exciting times of the Open Source revolution. The Cathedral & the Bazaar was a good essay, and Homesteading the Noosphere was, too, I guess.

As for The Magic Cauldron, I started taking exception to some of the claims. For example, "No software customer will rationally choose to lock itself into a supplier-controlled monopoly by becoming dependent on closed source if any open-source alternative of acceptable quality is available." I respectfully disagree. Whereas I would greatly prefer it, and have run Linux on a laptop as my primary desktop, I have found myself going back show more to Microsoft Windows 7 as my preferred choice. I am not alone in this regard.

There is no doubt that Microsoft has taken some cues from the Open Source revolution and developed better products since this book was written, but there is a lot of Microsoft bashing and hubris that I find often has accompanied Open Source adoption, some deserved, some not.

As for the final section, How To Become A Hacker. I feel the book went off the rails. Whereas Eric S. Raymond states that he is an accidental revolutionary and didn't want the job, he certainly embraced it. I agree with the sentiment that "You are finally a hacker when others call you a hacker," but there is also way too much egoism here. Lines like the following, "Go away, idiot" and "Go to a DOS prompt and type 'format c:'. The problems you are experiencing will cease in a few minutes" do not earn any points with me.

Lastly, the same tired "hacker" versus "cracker" arguments come up again. I'll start using "cracker" instead of "hacker" when people such as the author start using other terminology like using "hypothesis" instead of "theory" correctly. show less

This is a collection of essays which are all available online but nice to have in book form. The common theme through all the essays is explaining, from an insider's point of view, who hackers are and why open source software seems to work so well. Although ESR can sometimes brush off the commercial world (and even the academic world) a bit quickly, his essays feel right to me overall.

I think he is right about why open source software tends to be of such good quality (frequent small releases, users encouraged to submit bugs and become part of the developer community, peer review). However, I think it is going a bit far to say that the factors which make OSS good also make closed source bad.

One area where the analysis does seem to be show more right on is his discussion of why people contribute to open source. The short version is that people contribute to open source because they have a need or an interest in the problem, but they continue contributing in open source because they build up a reputation. This reputation is not for themselves, but for their code and other work. No one can be an open source coder for the reputation, but the reputation is the community's way of letting developers know that their work is being used and appreciated. One way to think of it is that reputation lets people know there is value is working for others, not just themselves.

Anyone who participates in code development should read this book. show less

If you are interested in the roots of open source, this is a great read. The book is a collection of essays, with The Cathedral and the Bazaar being the best essay by far. The Brief History of Hackerdom + Revenge of the Hackers are interesting historical accounts; Appendix A is instructional for the clueless (and a pleasant refresher for the “part-time” hacker). The rest is, for the most part, an exposé into the hacker culture and is definitely worth reading.

A grain of salt. Some of the conclusions the author makes seem to be problematic, at least in my opinion. The author often compares the hacker community to the academic research community, but fails to follow one of the key requirements in science, which is to question one's show more results. Consider this: "Having established that prestige is central to the hacker culture's reward mechanisms, we now need to understand..." (p. 89) - this follows a section where the author actually *fails* to find evidence directly supporting his proposition: "many hackers ... show a strong reluctance to admit that their behavior was motivated by a desire for peer repute..." (p. 88). In academia, we would not state that our subject "failed to admit" something - because that implies that we know for a fact that our subject is "guilty", which begs the question: why even ask the subject? Why bother with doing research?

However, this is not a research paper - so what’s the big deal? To me, here’s the big issue: the author repeatedly refers to himself as an ethnographer, mentions qualitative research method, speaks of developing and testing theories, and makes frequent references to a variety of concepts from the social sciences. As a result, the essays read more like research reports, which we expect to be impartial accounts supported by systematically collected and analyzed data. Which is not really the case here.

That said, the essays offer useful insights, as well as memorable one-liners - such as "smart data structures and dumb code works a lot better than the other way around" or “every good work of software starts by scratching a developer's personal itch” - which are a delight to read for any programmer. show less

Raymond's account of the growth of open source in the 1990's has some historical value, but beyond that I don't understand the appeal of this book. Raymond butchers the science, offers half-baked social theories, and aggrandizes the open source movement and himself. The major point of his main essay, about the cathedral/bazaar metaphor, is flawed based on his own data. His writing has the grandiose vacuity of a Wired editorial.

I enjoyed reading this more then I expected at first, given its age. The initial essay was really good and the highlight of the book. The essay in the middle was a little to academically analytical for casual reading, but would be quite interesting if doing research on the open source community. The last essay was a nice general narrative of Eric Raymond's experience since writing the initial essay.

An internal hacker's history of the rise of open source software and Linux, presented as a series of essays. At times prophetic, at other times quite dated. Only made it through half of the essays before losing it while traveling in Finland (i.e., releasing it open source).

Raymond's methodical approach to describing the benefits of open source programming as well as the scenarios under which it flourishes and why is very clear. A good read for all geeks.