STARTENCSEN/CS TranslationsZVON
Eric Raymond
The Cathedral and the Bazaar
22.11.1998
I anatomize a successful open-source project, fetchmail, that was run as a deliberate test of some surprising theories about software engineering suggested by the history of Linux. I discuss these theories in terms of two fundamentally different development styles, the ``cathedral'' model of most of the commercial world versus the ``bazaar'' model of the Linux world. I show that these models derive from opposing assumptions about the nature of the software-debugging task. I then make a sustained argument from the Linux experience for the proposition that ``Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow'', suggest productive analogies with other self-correcting systems of selfish agents, and conclude with some exploration of the implications of this insight for the future of software.
Contents
The Cathedral and the Bazaar
The Mail Must Get Through
The Importance of Having Users
Release Early, Release Often
When Is A Rose Not A Rose?
Popclient becomes Fetchmail
Fetchmail Grows Up
A Few More Lessons From Fetchmail
Necessary Preconditions for the Bazaar Style
The Social Context of Open-Source Software
Acknowledgements
For Further Reading
Epilog: Netscape Embraces the Bazaar!
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