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From: John Young <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: The Cathedral and the Bazaar
Date: Monday, February 02, 1998 12:50 AM

Netscape announced a week ago that it will give away its
heretofore closely guarded source code for development by
programmers worldwide in order to compete with the centralized
wealth and power of Microsoft.

The decision apparently was based on reading a paper
by a young programmer, Eric Raymond, titled "The Cathedral
and the Bazaar," in which he analyses the success of
Linux and his own e-mail program through widely-distributed
free-software development involving hundreds of volunteer
programmers around the globe.

Design, testing, implementation, elimination of bugs, adding
features and so on were accomplished far more imaginatively,
efficiently and quickly than in any corporate model. This persuaded
Netscape to emulate the model, and Eric has been invited to advise
Netscape and other major software corporations on how to
improve their operations through freeware distributed
development. (See his message below.)

In the paper Eric contrasts the centralized building of a cathedral
with that of a distributed effort of the bazaar, and gives details
on how distributed design and development is energized and
effective to overcome the limitations of too much control by
"power-driven" heirarchies.

It's an impressive paper, and has relevance for all types of
design in the still blossoming information era.

We've mirrored a copy at:

   http://jya.com/cathedral.htm

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From: "Eric S. Raymond" <[log in to unmask]>

We interrupt our normal programming to inform everybody that I'm
likely to be a bit preoccupied and/or out of touch for the next week.

The 23 Jan Netscape announcement has borne unexpected fruit.  Some of
you probably know by now that Netscape is now officially crediting my
research paper ("The Cathedral and the Bazaar", available on my site)
with having been a fundamentally important factor in their decision to
release Navigator 5.0 as freeware in source.

Life continues to get more interesting.  This coming week I'm flying
to Netscape's headquarters in Silicon Valley to meet with Netscape's
top brass and technical people.  We're going to be defining Netscape's
followup -- licensing terms, development strategy, freeware community
outreach, spreading the free-software concept.

Not only that, but arrangements are being made for me to meet with
other leading Silicon Valley CEOs whose names I am not yet at liberty to
reveal.  The mission will to convince them that the freeware-centered,
open-development strategy is the only way for them to head off total
Microsoft domination.

This is the big time, people -- the Internet free-software culture's
breakout into commercial viability at a level even Wall Street can see
is happening *now*.  And I'm involved it up to my ears.  *Gulp!*
You'll have to excuse me for being a bit distracted just now.  I've
got some preparation to do...

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Thanks to Robert Hettinga for forwarding.


John Young
HYA/Urban Deadline
[log in to unmask]