The Uncommon Wisdom Of Eric S Raymond - The Cathedral And The Bazzar
I was watching a Jordan Peterson video exploring some initiatives for a philanthropic initiative or series of globel progects or potential targets of optimistic strategy and implementation for projects posited to make the world a better place. The representatives of the member countries of the UN had been coopted and numerous ideas mooted. They would not each and all of them be practicable to be chosen for funding and implementation. He and his guest were musing on how to optimize the best method of development and in view of the need to optimize motivation and encourage mutual voluntary cooperation, within the community. So I decided the opportunity to indulge myself in a rant about free software, GNULinux and opensource. In particular the development model that emerged in the Linux Kernel development from the beginning was deliberated on and in popular hacker culture so I posted as follows:
Hi Guys! Your initiative sounds very uplifting and I'll be following with interest. I'd recommend reading the paper 'The cathedral and the bazaar' by Eric , S Raymond, describing the emergent development process that emerged in the free software / opensource community, in particular the Linux kernel development under the supervision of Linus Torvalds the original programmer launching GNU Linux, and the model diverged and spread, into the various tools of the GNU Linux Operating System.
That development model departs from monolithic hierarchical control and top down administrative oversight. The prevailing mood of skeptical academic criticism was most overtly espoused by an IT professor (one of Torvold's lecturers) who contracted a massive case of foot in mouth that ensured history would relegate him to the antithesis of an ideal IT visionary prophet. His infamous pessimism and scornful pontification, denigrated the assumed to be futile endeavor to coordinate and manage a disparate and motley crew of un-coordinated and self-accountable/motivated voluntary programs; that each had unique goals and development aspirations. Quarrels and spaghetti codded disasters could presumably be anticipated with trivial efforts of foresight you could bet you left testicle upon. The Immortal last words he choose, likened the ongoing task implicit in such a role, to quote : 'hearing cats'.
NB: This comment turned into a blog length post - as bloody usual - so I am pasting in a link to the full version were I wax lyrically on the endless providence, rewards and joys of free-software and the hacking community that is both beneficiary and benefactor
The problem of authority and hierarchical delegation, task priority and co-opting the motivation of volunteers then delegation of and division of labor and responsibility to mutually coordinate and delegate, as it happens, ends up being bogged down in administrative process politics and negotiation of the administrative procedure itself, before even a keystroke og efort is directed to the practical productivity of the task to produce a software project itself. The incumbency of the cathederal like structure as it also happens is especialy prone to deteriation as it scales, whereas the bazzar style was found to have impecable coordination overheads and productivity in ever larger scales of magnitude. THe advent of mutual voulantary cooperation begets the self-motivated non-premptive and authoritarian trend of committy ordained adjendas and goal planning then tasking project management by delegated and coordinated premeditated comity responsibilirt and authority administration that consumes inordinate planning and colaberation in the political and adminastrative process mannagement by sellf-refferance or introspective administration of the commity itself and well as its protocols of adminitive coordination and then the outcomes can follow but by then the self determanisn of mutual voulantary cooperation if diffused into the beuracracy and the enthusiasm dissipatrd by the hireachical codependancy relying on reciprocal enthusiasm investment that must transverse up and down the hireachy and also the motives being engaged via vicarious motivation/investment cooperation implicit in the concentration of powere and decission coalation the comitment by delegated task having far less bariers to self motivation and enthusiasm. The code is not only NOT harder to coordinate, but MUCH more liberated from bottlenecks in coordination and administrative complexity and demanding of effort, by barely more than the individuals own commitment to whatever task they themseves have taken on board. The code need to be reviewed in most cases, but hardly has an overhead beyond direct productivity. Obviously this is not an issolated nor software speciffic project development strategy, and no possesed of any overtly obvious structural objective restence bariers or tangeneal diversion liabilities for coopting the model in any number of practical innitiatives. Appart from that I reccomend the book rebel code that details the historic rise and evolution of free software, opensource and the hacker community. The details it illuminates which have relevance for the success concern the culture of the hacking community and the enthusuiasm to be recognised and respected and the garnering of kudos and pride in the hacker ethos that manifests in partivcular, due to the culture being nominaly a GIFT CULTURE and the motive of choice in the model of the bazzar that so typified the hacker distain for authority and the intelectual and etheical confluance of clever with the pride that is engendered by not only being able to showcase ones cleverness (playfull intelectual povinence) but in unified and mutual commitment to contribute the PRACTICAL AND UTILITARIAN GIFTS, the deliverables are manifest and forever thereafter a legacy of gifted providence that empoweres not only the world and the hacker commuity but by ethical investment into free software licencing (of GNU GPL) and the extensible will to donate the wheel thet need never be reinvented and the rights to contribut and to use and toe re-distribute by infinite delegation and retain the four esential freedons that make this the embodiement and epottomy of liberty infomation and ethical will to self determination and to preservation of collective honor all with the transferable oblication of those right rights to be obligatory in transferrable by indefinite repetitive itterations beholden to and liberated by the same binding licence in perpituity. The ease of this being the target of enthusiastic investment of effort and the enrichment of the world by freesoftware prolifferation, makes it a no brainer for the self-determined motivations to be deployed upon and the highest ideals of ethical fortitude and dedication in the expectation of pride kudos and even practical utlity not just to make ones life better, but that of ANYBODY who might wish to use or modsify coppy or distribute, the ubiquitios contribution of practical / tangible results, as well as potential opertunity to make development efforts if the existing code base has any existing coopting of colaboration vectors of opportunity so the reuse and exrensibilit of code can snowball and the plethora of software is on offer for the takeing as templates for modification and the usefull functionality can be used in the applications anybody wishes to develop or perhaps the codebase can be the playground that the self taught hacker might enlist and experiment with, read and modify test and experiment, to learn and to gain a community of beta testers power users and the motive of joining and helping the community of the existing application software, that may be deployed as a comunication fora, code repository and documentation platform that often serves mutual troubleshooting configuration and usage documents and boards, wherein the non-programmer can get guidence learn help test current versions and contribute to dicumentatin if the like and the kudos they can expect will invariably be the epitomy of all assets confiring a commitment to mentoring by experiance hackers and develoment team members/ forum admin etc... So the myriad of deliverables and cohesive community intergrated support and mutual investment is FAR beyond even the assounding benifits of the code itself. THe freesoftware / opensource progect of choice has Practical psychological, sociological, ecomomic and intelectual stores of value that go beyond the global limits of provisions that third party vendors typically provision and typicaly lay precedents of interstellar magnitude.
