BKCATBAZ.RVW 20000125 "The Cathedral and the Bazaar", Eric S. Raymond, 1999, 1-56592-724-9, U$19.95/C$29.95 %A Eric S. Raymond esr@thyrus.com esr@ccantares.scupa.edu %C 103 Morris Street, Suite A, Sebastopol, CA 95472 %D 1999 %G 1-56592-724-9 %I O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. %O U$19.95/C$29.95 800-998-9938 fax: 707-829-0104 nuts@ora.com %P 268 p. %T "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" At the top of the front cover, we have a quote from Guy Kawasaki telling us that this is "[t]he most important book about technology today, with implications that go far beyond programming." I'm not entirely sure that I can unreservedly go along with the bit about most important, but the far-reaching implications I can agree with wholeheartedly. This is a collection of essays, spanning many years. I tend to cringe at essay collections, since all too many of them have problems with staying on topic, finding a common audience, and presenting consistent readability. A single author tends to make a better job of fulfilling those factors, but doesn't always have much to deliver beyond a single and fairly unimportant idea again, and again, and again. Eric Raymond, however, can be counted upon to say well what he has to say. More importantly, he has something to say. These essays follow the common thread of the open source movement, but examine it from a variety of significant angles. An introduction briefly presents the case for considering open source. "A Brief History of Hackerdom" gives a historical background to the hacker culture, from which the open source movement got its primary roots. Ironically, while Raymond demonstrates erudition in his presentation of historical and social parallels in other fields, he neglects the non-UNIX computer hobbyist communities, such as Apple user groups, DECUS, and Fidonet. The eponymous "Cathedral and the Bazaar" recounts personal observations of an open source project, backed up by social analysis of the success. Drawing from Fred Brooks' "The Mythical Man-Month" (cf. BKMYMAMO.RVW), Raymond outlines the conditions under which Brooks' Law (throwing staff at a late project makes it later) does not apply, and establishes that open source is not a utopian dream, but a practical reality. "Homesteading the Noosphere" recalls the work Raymond has done with the Jargon File and "The New Hacker's Dictionary" (cf. BKNHACKD.RVW) in documenting the sociology of hacker culture, and is arguably the most important article in the book. One example is the insight that hacker culture is characterized by openness while the often confused cracker/pirate/phreak "community" is most definitely closed. "The Magic Cauldron" examines the viability and sustainability of the open source movement, and presents real and logical reasons for its survival. Finally, "Revenge of the Hackers" grounds all of this discussion very much in the real world with the cases of Linux, Netscape, and other open source examples. Not all of them are unqualified successes at this point, but they are evidence that open source is not just an academic speculation. As the dust jacket quote says, though, open source has meaning beyond software development. As David Brin pointed out the ironies of privacy in "The Transparent Society" (cf. BKTRASOC.RVW), and Jeffrey Pfeffer outlined in "The Human Equation" (cf. BKHUMEQU.RVW) the contradiction of making your staff work like a well-oiled machine by not treating your employees like machines, so Raymond's examples of technology development touch on an enormous range of human endeavour in work, management, and a variety of social interactions. While the projects discussed will have the greatest meaning for those who know programming, the lessons to be learned, and the social experiments to be explored, have implications for everyone. copyright Robert M. Slade, 2000 BKCATBAZ.RVW 20000125