“Eric Raymond incorporates reader insights into his essay on the
open-source economy.”
“Eric Raymond’s most recent essay on open-source software, “The
Magic Cauldron,” set off the usual firestorm of debate over whether
open source makes sense in a business context. Raymond is without
question one of the most prominent and influential advocates of
open-source software, but that doesn’t mean every observation he
makes is accepted as holy writ by the programming community. Quite
the contrary — as the media profile of open-source/free software
rises, Raymond is getting hammered with at least as much abuse as
praise.”
“But whatever your opinion of Raymond, you can’t accuse him of
not living up to his own hallowed methodology. Raymond’s core
argument is that the key strength of open-source software rests in
its inherent promotion of widespread peer review. When everyone can
see the source code, improvements and bug fixes are easily made and
smoothly incorporated back into the code stream. Raymond applies
exactly this process to his own essays.”