SunWorld.com: The truth about open source software [Book Reviews: The Cathedral and the Bazaar]

“Unfortunately, Raymond makes the mistake in The Cathedral and
the Bazaar of trumpeting the open source Netscape browser as a
success. Despite the effort Raymond put into evangelizing it, it’s
not a success. AOL (Netscape’s parent company) may find something
to do with that code in future versions of its browser, but
Microsoft has irretrievably won the PC browser wars.”

“The other highlight of the book is the paper called
“Homesteading the Noosphere,” (pronounced KNOW-uh-sphere), an
attempt to explain hacker behavior and culture in a
pseudoanthropological way, as one might explain the cooperative
economics of an African tribe. The paper explains how hackers are
motivated to write software and give away the source, how they work
together on big projects, how one earns hacker credibility, and so
on.”

“The paper is fascinating, but the slight trouble with it is
that Raymond is a tribesman. In that sense, Raymond tries to be as
factual as possible, but he can’t be objective. He can’t help but
assume as background that hacker culture is inherently superior to
its opposite, the culture of Dilbert-like programmers in big
commercial companies. However true that may be, Raymond is
unable to rise above his prejudices, which weakens the paper just
that little bit.”

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