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 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.

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. ( )

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. ( )

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 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. ( )

Interesting mind set for surrounding global commitment over any Corporate folks vs. huge Community - This is for sure a kind of new 'Business Model' to learn !

Thursday, Dec 16 2010 ( )