The Cathedral & the Bazaar (Hard Cover)

Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary

By Eric S. Raymond
January 1900
Pages: 279
ISBN 10: 1-56592-724-9 | ISBN 13: 9781565927247
(5) (Average of 3 Customer Reviews)

This book is OUT OF PRINT. Please consider the latest edition.

Description

After Red Hat's stunning IPO, even people outside the computer industry have now heard of Linux and open source software. This book contains the essays, originally published online, that led to Netscape's decision to release their browser as open source, put Linus Torvalds on the cover of Forbes Magazine and Microsoft on the defensive, and helped Linux to rock the world of commercial software. These essays have been expanded and revised for this edition, and are in print for the first time.
Full Description

"This is how we did it." --Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux kernel It all started with a series of odd statistics. The leading challenger to Microsoft's stranglehold on the computer industry is an operating system called Linux, the product of thousands of volunteer programmers who collaborate over the Internet. The software behind a majority of all the world's web sites doesn't come from a big company either, but from a loosely coordinated group of volunteer programmers called the Apache Group. The Internet itself, and much of its core software, was developed through a process of networked collaboration. The key to these stunning successes is a movement that has come to be called open source, because it depends on the ability of programmers to freely share their program source code so that others can improve it. In 1997, Eric S. Raymond outlined the core principles of this movement in a manifesto called "The Cathedral and the Bazaar," which was published and freely redistributed over the Internet. Mr. Raymond's thinking electrified the computer industry. He argues that the development of the Linux operating system by a loose confederation of thousands of programmers--without central project management or control--turns on its head everything we thought we knew about software project management. Internet-enabled collaboration and free information sharing, not monopolistic control, is the key to innovation and product quality. This idea was interesting to more than programmers and software project leaders. It suggested a whole new way of doing business, and the possibility of unprecedented shifts in the power structures of the computer industry. The rush to capitalize on the idea of open source started with Netscape's decision to release its flagship Netscape Navigator product under open source licensing terms in early 1998. Before long, Fortune 500 companies like Intel, IBM, and Oracle were joining the party. By August 1999, when the leading Linux distributor, Red Hat Software, made its hugely successful public stock offering, it had become clear that open source was "the next big thing" in the computer industry. This revolutionary book starts out with "A Brief History of Hackerdom"--the historical roots of the open-source movement--and details the events that led to the recognition of the power of open source. It contains the full text of "The Cathedral & the Bazaar," updated and expanded for this book, plus Mr. Raymond's other key essays on the social and economic dynamics of open source software development. Open source is the competitive advantage in the Internet Age. The Cathedral & the Bazaar is a must for anyone who cares about the computer industry or the dynamics of the information economy. Already, billions of dollars have been made and lost based on the ideas in this book. Its conclusions will be studied, debated, and implemented for years to come.

Featured customer reviews

The Cathedral & the Bazaar(Hardback) Review, January 11 2001

Rating:

Submitted by Todd Hawley [Respond | View]

Insightful view of the Open Source phenomenon

I had a chance to read Eric Raymond's essay, "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" about a year ago and was fascinated by it. I hadn't given much thought to the concept of "open source" products. When I found out there was a book out with related essays, I knew I had to read it because I found the concept fascinating.

Raymond doesn't dissapoint in this book, which is a series of his essays about Open Source and its most popular product, the Linux Operating System. The essays include "A Brief History of Hackerdom" (which gives a capsule history of hackers and takes great pains to explain the difference between hackers and the much-hated "crackers"); the main essay, and essays titled Homesteading the Noosphere and The Magic Cauldron, that further describe the growth of this phenomenon.

An interesting book and Raymond gives his audience an idea of how Open Source really got started, the amazing amount of creative minds in the "hacker culture," and his thoughts on what the future holds for it.

The Cathedral & the Bazaar(Hardback) Review, December 25 2000

Rating:

Submitted by Roman [Respond | View]

Great, just great. Well-written, instructive, inspiring, illuminating. Period. So don't read any reviews anymore, just read this book!

The Cathedral & the Bazaar(Hardback) Review, September 24 2000

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Submitted by Joe Black [Respond | View]

This book is a great read. Fascinating ideas. Eric has a talent for mapping the software wilderness and points the way to our future.

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The Cathedral & the Bazaar(Hardback) Review, March 21 2000
Submitted by Eric Woolhiser [Respond | View]

True to open source practices, Eric Raymond has published much of this on the web (http://www.tuxedo.org), but it is worth having something to hightlight and dogear!

After reading through his website, it has changed my approach to my automated build engine.
Now that I am even thinking about open sourceing, I'm writing my code like I expect people are goign to read it. You know, like as if I was in college again.

Say a prayer for me, as I try to get a copyright disclaimer from my company!

Even if I don't get the disclaimer, reading Eric Raymond has put enthusiasm back into writing my code!

Media reviews "Both as an overview of the open-source movement and as a case study in economic and cultural change, Raymond's book is a great read. The author is far from impartial, but he is realistic; he admits there are areas, such as office applications, where closed-source software is still appropriate. In the end, however, he believes that the entire computing infrastructure -- operating systems, the Internet and communications software -- will be open source, "cooperatively maintained by user consortia and by for- profit distribution/service outfits with a role like that of RedHat." If that happens, The Cathedral & The Bazaar could well be remembered as the most important book on the software frontier of the 1990s." -- Wade Roush, MIT Technology Review, Jan/Feb 2000

"It's a spirited compilation of four polemical essays documenting the rise of Linux and the Open Source movement, and it comes up to date with a final chapter written as recently as August. Given the recent legal judgement, this book could become really hot. And it's good too." -- Dr Roy Johnson, www.mantex.co.uk Nov 1999

"Raymond is intelligent and literate, and makes his arguments about the benefits of open source in ways that are calculated to convince corporations that there's more money to be made with open code than closed in many situations. He's one of the relatively few people who can write first-hand accounts of long-running, successful open source projects, and can write authoritatively about the hacker community in the early days of the Internet... Raymond is not only a gifted hacker, but an excellent writer as well. He manages to convey information about the culture one has to manage, which turns out to be very good way to teach someone how to manage it; or at least it was for me, anyway...These essays are pretty much required reading, I would say, for anyone running a software company today. If you want to set up an open source project, there's no better information available. The early history of hacking is interesting and of course he's got a good handle on how and why Linux has been so successful." -- Michael Sims, slashdot.org, Nov 11, 1999

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