1. The Cathedral and the Bazaar
Linux is subversive. Who would have thought even five years ago that a
world-class operating system could coalesce as if by magic out of part-time
hacking by several thousand developers scattered all over the planet, connected
only by the tenuous strands of the Internet?
Certainly not I. By the time Linux swam onto my radar screen in early
1993, I had already been involved in Unix and open-source development for
ten years. I was one of the first GNU contributors in the mid-1980s. I
had released a good deal of open-source software onto the net, developing
or co-developing several programs (nethack, Emacs VC and GUD modes, xlife,
and others) that are still in wide use today. I thought I knew how it was
done.
Linux overturned much of what I thought I knew. I had been preaching
the Unix gospel of small tools, rapid prototyping and evolutionary programming
for years. But I also believed there was a certain critical complexity
above which a more centralized, a priori approach was required. I believed
that the most important software (operating systems and really large tools
like Emacs) needed to be built like cathedrals, carefully crafted by individual
wizards or small bands of mages working in splendid isolation, with no
beta to be released before its time.
Linus Torvalds's style of development - release early and often, delegate
everything you can, be open to the point of promiscuity - came as a surprise.
No quiet, reverent cathedral-building here -- rather, the Linux community
seemed to resemble a great babbling bazaar of differing agendas and approaches
(aptly symbolized by the Linux archive sites, who'd take submissions from
anyone) out of which a coherent and stable system could seemingly
emerge only by a succession of miracles.
The fact that this bazaar style seemed to work, and work well, came
as a distinct shock. As I learned my way around, I worked hard not just
at individual projects, but also at trying to understand why the Linux
world not only didn't fly apart in confusion but seemed to go from strength
to strength at a speed barely imaginable to cathedral-builders.
By mid-1996 I thought I was beginning to understand. Chance handed me
a perfect way to test my theory, in the form of an open-source project
which I could consciously try to run in the bazaar style. So I did -- and
it was a significant success.
In the rest of this article, I'll tell the story of that project, and
I'll use it to propose some aphorisms about effective open-source development.
Not all of these are things I first learned in the Linux world, but we'll
see how the Linux world gives them particular point. If I'm correct, they'll
help you understand exactly what it is that makes the Linux community such
a fountain of good software -- and help you become more productive yourself.
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