The cathedral and the bazaar
Year: 1998
Type: article
Abstract: I anatomize a successful open-source project, fetchmail, that was run as a deliberate test of some 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, representing 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.
Source: First Monday
DOI: 10.5210/fm.v3i2.578
Author: Eric Raymond
Language: English
Subfield: Computer Science Applications
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W2041114254