Michael Kesper <[email protected]> writes: > Hi, > > On Thu, Dec 03, 2009 at 10:10:54PM +0100, Theo Schmidt wrote: > > Carsten Agger schrieb: > > > Just an observation: While the "Open Source Initiative" may have > > > failed, I did appreciate some aspects of "The Cathedral and the > > > Bazaar". > > I'm not too sure.
> 1. The analogy is false: Cathedrals were built very much like he > describes bazaars. That's irrelevant to the analogy, since it doesn't compare the building *of* cathedrals versus the building *of* bazaars. Instead, it compares the social activities that *go on within* already-built cathedrals versus bazaars, and the resulting *output* of those societies. > 2. Development models are orthogonal to the question of whether a > software is free or not. (The term you want is not “a software”, since the English-language “software” is uncountable like “hardware” or “sand”. Better to use the (copyright-inspired) term “a work”.) I agree, and that seems to be close to the core of the difference between “open source” versus “free software”: Raymond emphasises the utility of the process as more important than the freedom of the result. I prefer to talk about free software, as I suspect do you. Note, though, that Carsten's comment still holds: there are many aspects of the essay that are appreciably good. It's a valuable story and a good analogy for development processes. It shows that free software is *better* at encouraging bazaar-style development, but it doesn't *guarantee* it — as pointed out by its examples of cathedral-style development of free software. -- \ “If consumers even know there's a DRM, what it is, and how it | `\ works, we've already failed.” —Peter Lee, Disney corporation, | _o__) 2005 | Ben Finney
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