Book details of 'The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary'

Title	The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary
Author(s)	Eric S. Raymond
ISBN	1565927249
Language	English
Published	October 1999
Publisher	O'Reilly & Associates

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The Virtual Bookcase Reviews of 'The Cathedral and the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary':

Reviewer Koos van den Hout wrote:
In this book Eric S. Raymond explains the open source world and the development of Linux as he lives through it, is a part of it and makes a living in it. It is coloured by his (sometimes strong) opinions on matters like this. The book is readable for both the open source hacker who is part of this revolution and the manager who gets confronted by it and wants to learn more. The sociology is explained, the why things are done in certain ways which may be confusing or strange to people.
Reviewer amazon.com wrote:
It may be foolish to consider Eric Raymond's recent collection of essays, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, the most important computer programming thinking to follow the Internet revolution. But it would be more unfortunate to overlook the implications and long-term benefits of his fastidious description of open-source software development considering the growing dependence businesses and economies have on emerging computer technologies. The Cathedral and the Bazaar takes its title from an essay Raymond read at the 1997 Linux Kongress. The essay documents Raymond's acquisition, re-creation, and numerous revisions of an e-mail utility known as fetchmail. Raymond engagingly narrates the fetchmail development process while elaborating on the ongoing bazaar development method he uses with the help of volunteer programmers. The essay smartly spares the reader from the technical morass that could easily detract from the text's goal of demonstrating the efficacy of the open-source, or bazaar, method in creating robust, usable software. Once Raymond has established the components and players necessary for an optimally running open-source model, he sets out to counter the conventional wisdom of private, closed-source software development. Like superbly written code, the author's arguments systematically anticipate their rebuttals. For programmers who "worry that the transition to open source will abolish or devalue their jobs," Raymond adeptly and factually counters that "most developer's salaries don't depend on software sale value." Raymond's uncanny ability to convince is as unrestrained as his capacity for extrapolating upon the promise of open-source development. In addition to outlining the open-source methodology and its benefits, Raymond also sets out to salvage the hacker moniker from the nefarious connotations typically associated with it in his essay, "A Brief History of Hackerdom" (not surprisingly, he is also the compiler of The New Hacker's Dictionary). Recasting hackerdom in a more positive light may be a heroic undertaking in itself, but considering the Herculean efforts and perfectionist motivations of Raymond and his fellow open-source developers, that light will shine brightly.
Reviewer Rob Slade wrote:
At the top of the front cover, we have a quote from Guy Kawasaki telling us that this is "[t]he most important book about technology today, with implications that go far beyond programming." I'm not entirely sure that I can unreservedly go along with the bit about most important, but the far-reaching implications I can agree with wholeheartedly. This is a collection of essays, spanning many years. I tend to cringe at essay collections, since all too many of them have problems with staying on topic, finding a common audience, and presenting consistent readability. A single author tends to make a better job of fulfilling those factors, but doesn't always have much to deliver beyond a single and fairly unimportant idea again, and again, and again. Eric Raymond, however, can be counted upon to say well what he has to say. More importantly, he has something to say. These essays follow the common thread of the open source movement, but examine it from a variety of significant angles. An introduction briefly presents the case for considering open source. "A Brief History of Hackerdom" gives a historical background to the hacker culture, from which the open source movement got its primary roots. Ironically, while Raymond demonstrates erudition in his presentation of historical and social parallels in other fields, he neglects the non-UNIX computer hobbyist communities, such as Apple user groups, DECUS, and Fidonet. The eponymous "Cathedral and the Bazaar" recounts personal observations of an open source project, backed up by social analysis of the success. Drawing from Fred Brooks' "The Mythical Man-Month" (see reviews), Raymond outlines the conditions under which Brooks' Law (throwing staff at a late project makes it later) does not apply, and establishes that open source is not a utopian dream, but a practical reality. "Homesteading the Noosphere" recalls the work Raymond has done with the Jargon File and "The New Hacker's Dictionary" (see reviews) in documenting the sociology of hacker culture, and is arguably the most important article in the book. One example is the insight that hacker culture is characterized by openness while the often confused cracker/pirate/phreak "community" is most definitely closed. "The Magic Cauldron" examines the viability and sustainability of the open source movement, and presents real and logical reasons for its survival. Finally, "Revenge of the Hackers" grounds all of this discussion very much in the real world with the cases of Linux, Netscape, and other open source examples. Not all of them are unqualified successes at this point, but they are evidence that open source is not just an academic speculation. As the dust jacket quote says, though, open source has meaning beyond software development. As David Brin pointed out the ironies of privacy in "The Transparent Society" (see reviews), and Jeffrey Pfeffer outlined in "The Human Equation" (see reviews) the contradiction of making your staff work like a well-oiled machine by not treating your employees like machines, so Raymond's examples of technology development touch on an enormous range of human endeavour in work, management, and a variety of social interactions. While the projects discussed will have the greatest meaning for those who know programming, the lessons to be learned, and the social experiments to be explored, have implications for everyone. copyright Robert M. Slade, 2000
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