The Cathedral vs. the Bazaar is actually a book titled, “The Cathedral & the Bazaar,” written by Eric S. Raymond. In this book, Raymond writes about “Musings on Linux and Open Source,” as the cover of his book displays. To put it in a nutshell, this book explains the different ways software and the internet are being developed. He researched the way that Linux was developed and the method behind the engineering. Raymond directed a similar project to Linux, developed in the open source fashion. Apparently there are two main methods of open source software design and between these two methods, there is some type of disagreement. In one method, the source code behind the project is available whenever the project software is released; however, if the project is not yet complete, then only a select few have access to the source code. In the other method, the source code is openly available to everyone via the internet through all stages of development. This second method is that with which Linus Torvalds created Linux.
Raymond’s argument for supporting the latter method is that if everyone is working on this one project, then the chances of there being mistakes is greatly diminished because someone is bound to catch the error.
The reason this book is important is because it is changing the way that software is developed. It is exposing the benefits of open source code, and as a result, is making better software for consumers. It is helping the public as well as software engineers realize that collaboration on a project in mass scale makes for a better product. But even beyond that, if this catches on, capitalism and consumerism could change face to employ efforts similar in other areas of technology, thus providing a major benefit to the greater good of society.
This books is available to read for free on google books:
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