Bazaar Style Development
August 14th 2008
In regards to Eric Raymond’s The Cathedral and the Bazaar, more specifically the chapter of the same name, I have an observation.
Many of the open source projects that Raymond would refer to as bazaar projects, aren’t really 100% bazaar. Specifically, if we look at the Linux kernel, changes still all go through Linus Torvalds. It’s more like a cathedral with a personal bazaar that everybody knows about. There is this vast assortment of people, all making contributions, but contributions to Linus. Yes, the original authors are credited where credit is due, but I can’t just magically check something into the source tree for the kernel, it has to get okayed by Linus, or I believe any other of a small group that Linus picked anyway.
Also, in software firms today, you might have 2, 3, 4, 10 projects on the go, and each project might be working on something specific to their project, but a lot of the work they do can be reused in other projects the company is working on, so therefore, in this cathedral type establishment, we still have a bazaar type model where everybody is contributing to everything, as a base layer underneath it all.
It’s quite intriguing, but the cathedral and the bazaar almost work together.
