Comment by mastermedo
2 years ago
The Cathedral and the Bazaar often comes in discussions along with the Song of Sisyphus[0], a story of how Sisyphus software became widely used within Google. The use of it spread over bar drinks, completely organically. And Google had a very hard time deprecating it.
[0]: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/a-case-study/9781098114...
Right. If you want something that has perhaps a more profound and interesting description of the open source model (as Zawinski would put it, the "CADT model"), it's worth going back to Richard Gabriel:
https://www.dreamsongs.com/WorseIsBetter.html
Gabriel's essay is cited in Raymond's article. It's interesting to compare them; Raymond claims that Gabriel anticipated much of what his article was going to say, but I think they have markedly different takes about it.
"Worse Is Better" is elegiac, but it can also come across as a whine: "Those dumb users can't see Quality, they can only see Done, so they ignore my Beatific Solution in favor of some New Jersey Code that isn't nearly as good as what mine is going to be." Well, in a world where Done is a myth, Quality is a horizon; it's impossible to achieve Quality when the nature of your world is changing around you. The Right Thing is only Right as long as the Thing stays still.